Service clubs are often the backbone of small communities, providing leadership and performing charitable works for a common benefit. They help to make the community a better place to live while promoting good fellowship through the provision of their time, talents and treasure.

For over six decades Kemptville District Hospital (KDH) has gratefully benefitted from numerous service clubs in the area. That tradition of pulling together to strengthen health care in this community continues today as we witness their generous contributions (to date) to our $2.2 million CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign. In recent months, the KDH Foundation has received $419 from Bishop’s Mills Women Inspired, $4,000 from the Knights of Columbus 5333, $10,000 from Kiwanis Club of Manotick, $25,000 from Mountain and District Lions Club, $10,000 from Mount Zion 28 Masonic Lodge and $2,500 from the Royal Canadian Legion Kemptville Branch 212.

Service clubs have been there to support KDH from the very early beginnings when that first pressing call went out - build a hospital.

When the hospital Campaign began in June 1958, Dr. Jackson Flay, a member of the Kemptville Lions Club and one of the first physicians at KDH, launched it with a generous personal donation.

Other service club members followed suit, including fellow Kemptville Lions member, Norman Goldberg and Rotarians W.B. George, Albert Barr and Harry Van Allen – all of whom were Hospital Board Directors.

When the “Building Fund” ran dry in early 1960 due to escalating construction costs, a plea to fulfill pledges more quickly was answered by the Kemptville Lions Club. Their substantial June 1959 pledge of $1,500 was paid in full by September 1960.

In those early heady days, the service clubs furnished patient rooms, the laboratory and the x-ray department. They also gifted patient equipment such as wheelchairs, defibrillators, infant incubators and monitors.

Service clubs also contributed community service work. Rotarians planted over one thousand trees in June 1983 on the hospital grounds, previously the open fields of the Waterson farmland. They also helped the volunteer Fire Department with the hospital’s bi-annual “Disaster Exercises”.

The late Dr. George Fisher, Past Rotary District Governor (and later, Honourary Chair, “Lean On Me” Campaign) explained in an April 7, 1982, interview with The Weekly Advance that, “we in Rotary have now decided to supply…sophisticated, electronic medical equipment [to KDH] which will help our doctors not only save lives but potentially alleviate suffering and maybe reduce healing time”.

Some forty years later, Dr. Fisher could be delivering the same rallying cry to us today, as we fundraise for the CT Scanner which will bring better, faster urgent care closer to home.

At the “Putting on the Ritz” Gala three years later, the Lions Club, delighted the dinner guests when they presented a $5,000 cheque to the hospital, with a commitment for another $5,000.

Yet another group, the Rebekahs, contributed $3,000 to the Pain and Symptom Management Program. In a 2002 interview in The Advance/Review, the Treasurer of the Rebekahs, Muriel White, explained why they donated. Simply, “health care effects everyone… “

This same message resonates with the current CT Scanner Campaign.

Recently, the Royal Canadian Legion Kemptville Branch 212 donated to the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign. In the past, the Kemptville Legion and the Legion’s Ontario Command Charitable Foundation made it possible to acquire a Patient Lift and Syringe Pumps for the KDH OR.

During a previous KDH Foundation $10 million Capital Campaign in the mid-2000s, known as “Lean On Me”, the Knights of Columbus 5333 donated $40,000. Their gift was specially made possible by the proceeds from their annual - and very popular - “Sweetheart Brunch”. The successful campaign transformed the hospital, with a new and expanded ER, new ORs, a new Café and Gift Shop and a DI department which included Ultrasound, X-Ray, Mammography and Bone Density services.

In all of these past and present service club examples, and in so many others not mentioned here, they fully demonstrate the passionate commitment by service clubs to help and create positive change in the community’s quality of life while contributing to the hospital’s mission to build a healthy community.

The CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign is generating strong interest and an outpouring of generosity. Presently, the Foundation has raised over $1.2 million towards their goal of $2.2 million.

This diagnostic tool is urgently needed in Kemptville. It will mean accident and trauma patients, as well as in-patients, will not need to be sent for a CT Scan by an ambulance on a 100 km round trip to another hospital, already working at full capacity.

With the community’s dynamic growth, including residential projects and nursing homes, the hospital needs to be prepared.  KDH Chief of Staff Dr. Colin Sentongo said, “Having a CT Scanner is an essential part of this planning. An ER cannot operate effectively without one.”

The KDH Foundation Executive Director, Joanne Mavis, is very grateful and thrilled to acknowledge the recent donations to the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign from the service clubs in the area. She said, “Every single donation brings us closer to bringing the CT Scanner to KDH. This diagnostic tool will be a gamechanger for patients and physicians. We want to sincerely thank each and every one of the service club members for all their work and generosity, in the past and in the present. Together, we will make this happen.”

For more information, stories and events about the “KDH Foundation Crossroads CT Scanner $2.2 Million Campaign”, including how you can donate, see: The Crossroads Campaign

Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Board Chair (left) and Frank Vassallo, KDH CEO, (right) received the donation from Mountain Lion, Nathan Lang.

In March 2024, the Mountain and District Lions Club donated $25,000 to the KDH Foundation’s CT Scanner Campaign.

On February 24, 2024, the Mount Zion 28 Masonic Lodge held their Wild Game Dinner at the North Grenville Municipal Centre and donated $10,000 to the KDH Foundation’s CT Scanner Campaign.

(l-r) Kristy Carriere, KDH Foundation Co-ordinator, Lodge Officers Scott Lohnes and Gord Wyse, and KDH Foundation ED, Joanne Mavis.

Receiving the cheque were Joanne Mavis, KDH Foundation ED (left) and Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Board Chair (right).

Emcee and (Past Grand) Knight, Jean LeClair, presented a $4,000 cheque for the KDH Foundation’s CT Scanner Campaign from the Knights of Columbus 5333 at the “Sweetheart Brunch”, February 11, 2024.

On February 6, 2024, the Kiwanis Club of Manotick donated $10,000 to the KDH Foundation’s CT Scanner Campaign.

(l-r) Robert Lauder, Lt. Gov., Kiwanis, Division 13 and Past President, Kiwanis Club of Pembroke, Dean Usher, KDH Foundation Director, Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Board Chair and Gary Coulombe, Co-President, Kiwanis Club of Manotick.

In January 2024, Jean Lambert of the Bishop’s Mills Women Involved, (left) presented Kristy Carriere, KDH Foundation Coordinator, with a cheque for $419 for the KDH Foundation’s CT Scanner Campaign.

On December 12, 2023, Royal Canadian Legion Kemptville Branch 212 donated the proceeds from the 2023 Poppy Drive to the KDH Foundation's CT Scanner Campaign.

(l-r) Hester Horricks, Branch Secretary, Aubrey Callan, Branch Service Officer and Julie O’Brien, Branch Immediate Past President, presented a $2,500 cheque to Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Board Chair and Joanne Mavis, KDH Foundation ED.