Ninety-two-year-old Will Tishinski from Manitoba recently donated $531,000 in honour of his late wife, Mavis, a nurse who spent decades working at the hospital in south Winnipeg.

Tishinski was recognized as the biggest donor in the history of the Victoria Hospital Foundation through his decades of support for the hospital. His latest donation of $531,000 takes his cumulative giving to over $1 million. The couple met back in 1956, when Tishinski was a university engineering student who was admitted to Victoria Hospital and met Mavis, a young student nurse caring for patients on his ward. He was going through a difficult time, worried about his upcoming exams and future job, but meeting Mavis changed his life. The couple married and stayed together for 67 and a half years until Mavis died in April at age 88.

His latest donation will help upgrade a minimally invasive surgical suite, which has now been named the Mavis Tishinski Surgical Suite. The donation is a way for the family to honour Mavis and preserve her connection to the hospital where their love story began.

The Victoria Hospital Foundation described the Tishinski family’s donation as “transformational” after the family’s cumulative giving recently surpassed $1 million. Their earlier gifts helped create the Tranquility Trail for mental health patients and a sensory lounge for people living with dementia. The foundation hopes to use the new funding to improve more surgical suites in the coming years.

Source: Milan Lukes, CTV News