Peter Gilgan Foundation donates $100 million – largest single gift ever to SickKids Hospital

The Peter Gilgan Foundation has donated an unprecedented gift of $100 million to The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) – the largest single gift ever to SickKids. Together with donations made to other hospitals and health care organizations to date, this makes Peter Gilgan and the Peter Gilgan Foundation the largest benefactor to health care in Canada.This $100-million gift will support the SickKids VS Limits campaign, a key element of which involves redevelopment of the SickKids campus, including building a new patient care tower on University Avenue, which will be named the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower.Gilgan is founder and CEO of Mattamy Homes, the largest privately owned homebuilder in North America.

Breakthrough research

“We are extraordinarily grateful to Peter Gilgan and the Peter Gilgan Foundation for their ongoing philanthropic leadership and dedication to SickKids,” says Dr. Ronald Cohn, president and CEO of SickKids. “Our vision for the children’s hospital of the future includes the construction of a state-of-the-art building, matching our world-class care with family-friendly spaces for patients and their loved ones. This gift is unparalleled and will help ensure our vision becomes reality. In conjunction with a commitment from the government of Ontario, and support from other donors, this gift will help SickKids continue to advance children’s health through exemplary clinical care, breakthrough research, and teaching excellence both at home and around the world.”“To continue to have the opportunity to support SickKids is an honour and is also very humbling,” says Gilgan. “I’m in a privileged position to be able to make this gift, and I know it’s going to be used to help children, today and in the future, live longer and healthier lives.”The commitment from the Peter Gilgan Foundation to ensuring the SickKids campus is a cutting-edge world leader began in 2012 with a transformational gift of $40 million to support the construction of the SickKids Centre for Research and Learning. The Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning brings together 2,000 research staff – who previously worked in six different buildings – under one roof to enhance interactions between clinical and research colleagues. The integration of research with patient care and learning are among the strengths of SickKids. This most recent donation brings the cumulative giving from the Peter Gilgan Foundation to SickKids to more than $140 million.

Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower

SickKids will break ground in October 2019 on the first of two buildings. The first building, the Patient Support Centre, will house the SickKids Learning Institute with 1,200 world-class trainees, a Simulation Centre for hands-on teaching, and provide 6,000 professionals, management and support staff with up-to-date spaces to do their best work. The second building, the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower, will house critical care and inpatient units. It will reflect the very latest in medical design: Private one-family rooms, dedicated mental-health beds, a state-of-the-art blood and marrow/cellular transplant therapy unit, specialty operating theatres, advanced diagnostic imaging facilities, and a vastly expanded emergency department.

RELATED READING

Mattamy's Gilgan honours roots and parents with $10M donation to St. Joseph'sPeter E. Gilgan