Annual Report 2021

Fundraising: Facebook & Memorials

Facebook Fundraising with Denise Comeau

Artist Denise Comeau is at the stage of life where she’s getting rid of “trinkets,” so she doesn’t want gifts for birthdays or other occasions. For her most recent birthday, she jumped at the chance Facebook offers to do a fundraiser for the charity of your choice. Denise chose the Yarmouth Hospital Foundation, which she also supports with a monthly donation.

The notice was posted on her timeline and friends and family just had to click on a button and follow the prompts to make a donation to the foundation in her honour.

“It’s very easy and 100 percent of the money goes directly to the foundation. My fundraiser raised a little over $300,” Denise said. Her daughter, Ghislaine, who is a cancer survivor, also opened a fundraiser on Facebook and raised $780 in the first two hours. Her final tally was $2,450.

“I’ll do it for sure every year now,” Denise says. “It’s very important. If you can’t support your hospital, who can you support?”

Denise and her partner, Dr. Kenneth Deveau, live in Comeauville on the family horse farm; Kenneth serves on the YHF Board. She is a painter and printmaker whose watercolours are inspired by the landscape and the Acadian experience. Her work can be seen online at denisecomeau.com.

 

Gifts in Memory with Gladys Bower

Gladys Bower is a firm believer in giving local. “So many people want you to donate to a variety of causes,” Gladys said, “that at some point I just decided to give in memory of people to Yarmouth Hospital Foundation because everybody’s going to need the hospital at some time in their life.”

Gladys feels a strong connection with Yarmouth Regional Hospital. She started doing four-hour shifts one day a week on the Information Desk in January 1996, just a few months after she retired from Service Canada. Soon after she also began working in the gift shop run by the Women’s Auxiliary. She chose the hospital for her volunteer work because her brother worked in the lab for 30 years. When she started, the “new” hospital was just in the planning stage and the information desk was in Building C, next to where day surgery and rehabilitation services are now.

“We wouldn’t have the equipment we have if the foundation didn’t buy it, and we need all the equipment we can get,” she said.

While the pandemic kept Gladys away from the Information Desk for a while, it didn’t keep the hospital from her heart and mind. She continues to remember the hospital with her gifts to the foundation — in memory of friends who have passed away, and in honour of family at Christmas time.

Gladys Bower lives in Dayton