In the photo, proudly showing one of the three new Syringe Pumps recently purchased by the KDH Foundation are (l-r) Tanya Deans, RN, Manager, Clinical Services, Dr. Yvonne Kaethler, Anesthesiologist, Dr. Christopher Kirby, Chief of Anaesthesiology and Dr. Colin Sentongo, Chief of Staff. Through the wonderful generosity of The Royal Canadian Legion Ontario Command Branches and Ladies Auxiliary Charitable Foundation and the Royal Canadian Legion Kemptville Branch 212, $15,000 was gifted to the KDH Foundation to make this purchase possible.  A Syringe Pump is a small infusion pump used to gradually administer small amounts of fluid (with or without medication) to a patient. Our pumps in the OR were outdated and not compatible with the hospital’s new software system called EPIC. Thank you Royal Canadian Legion for this gift!

The Kemptville Tim Horton Smile Cookie Campaign held in May was another outstanding event in support of youth mental health in North Grenville. On June 11, Ingrid Kohling and Jose Salvador, independent owners of the Kemptville Tim Horton’s franchises, presented a $17,502 cheque to the Kemptville District Hospital (KDH) Foundation Board Chair, Margret Norenberg and Joanne Mavis, CEO of the KDH Foundation. These funds will be directed to WAY - Wellness Access for Youth.

WAY is a collaborative between fifteen community partners which includes Kemptville District Hospital. It provides referrals and support to youth and young adults aged 12 to 25 years of age, and their families, in need of mental health and addictions services.

Another WAY community partner is Connect Youth.

Dan MacKinnon, a navigator for Connect Youth in Kemptville, shared how their agency “aims to reduce barriers for youth and connect them with services, including housing for temporarily homeless teens.”

Robyn Holmes, Executive Director of Connect Youth, explained that “Smile cookie funds are used to support services that facilitate access to mental health supports for children, youth and families in the North Grenville community. Examples of supported activities include youth engagement groups, mental health promotion activities, community service coordination, and more.”

Kohling, the franchisee Tim Horton’s owner at Kemptville Mall, said, “Smile Cookies are so much more than just cookies. The focus of our Smile Cookie Campaign is about raising awareness. Through much appreciated support from our Kemptville Community we can help educate and end the stigma surrounding mental health. Our much-loved Smile Cookie represents community love, compassion and acceptance.”

Holmes added, “The ongoing support of the Smile Cookie Campaign is invaluable to the WAY program, as it not only supports service delivery but also reiterates our community's commitment to accessible mental health services for all.”

For more information about WAY and its health partners, see Wellness Access for Youth - KDH.   

For information about the Kemptville District Hospital Foundation and how to donate to the Crossroads CT Scanner Campaign, visit our campaign page.

A $15,000 donation was presented May 15 by members of the Royal Canadian Legion Kemptville Branch 212, from the Ontario Command Branches and Ladies Auxiliary Charitable Foundation. This gift is intended for the purchase of OR Syringe Pumps which administer medication in the OR at a steady rate over a long period of time. In December 2023, the Foundation had also received a $2,500 donation from Legion Branch 212 for the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign, the proceeds from their Poppy Campaign. The KDH Foundation is very grateful for the enduring support from the Legion!

On May 9, 2024, the Foundation was invited to a cheque presentation at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre in Ottawa. Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Chair (right) was presented a cheque for the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign from Erin Zipes, (left) Vice Chair of the Ottawa Jewish Community Fund. KDH Foundation was truly delighted to be a recipient of their Annual Disbursement Fund. Every donation brings us closer to our goal! Thank you!

The KDH Foundation recently had a banner day with two donations to the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign.

The first donation of the day was from Debra Amirault who dropped off two cheques in memory of her late mother. She remarked that the nurses at KDH were wonderful and so very thoughtful of her and her mother which was greatly appreciated, especially during that difficult time. She explained that her late mother had fallen a few times and had to go into Ottawa for a head scan to rule out a brain bleed or fracture. She said, “It will be huge to have the CT right here, in Kemptville!”

Kristy Carriere, KDH Foundation Coordinator (left) and Joanne Mavis, KDH Foundation Executive Director (right) received donations for the CT Scanner from donor, Debra Amirault (middle).Debra’s enthusiastic support of the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign continues with the Canada Day Bingo she and her husband are organizing at the Royal Canadian Legion 212 Kemptville Branch. All proceeds from the July 1 event will go towards the CT Scanner, including the 50/50 draw. Doors open at noon and the fun gets underway at 1:00 pm and continues until 3:00 pm. Refreshments will be available at the canteen.

The second community donation to the Crossroads Campaign on May 2 was from the Kemptville Duplicate Bridge Club. This was the second year in a row the club has generously presented $1,000 to the Foundation. Present to gratefully receive the cheque from the club’s president, Liz Robinson, was Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Chair and Joanne Mavis, KDH Foundation ED.

Every donation brings us a step closer to the Campaign goal of $2.2 million and having a CT Scanner in the Kemptville District Hospital. Its impact will mean better, faster and urgent care for patients.

For more information, stories and events about the Crossroads CT Scanner Campaign, including how you can donate, see: The Crossroads Campaign.

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.

Who knew that a fun, little idea would bring a donation to the Kemptville District Hospital (KDH) Foundation CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign, while also memorializing a recently deceased friend and curler?

Nancy Lebrun and Christiane Charron, members of the North Grenville Curling Club and organizers of the Monday Afternoon Women’s Curling League, instituted a $2 toll for each time a curler would “hog a rock”. (This meant the stone did not reach the far hog line and was removed from play.) With the end of the curling season, on March 25, Nancy and Christiane presented Kristy Carriere, KDH Foundation Coordinator, with a cheque for $377 in memory of Kim Ferris, a (past) member of the Monday afternoon Women's Curling League.

Kim’s husband, Robert, wrote a comment on Facebook, “Thank you ladies. Kim would have loved it!”  

Lebrun clarified, “it was not all ‘hogged rocks’. Tuesday evening Ladies League and members pitched in extra coins.”

Peggy MacPhail also commented on the Foundation’s Facebook page, “Leave it to a curling club to always do something good for the community. Bravo!”

Thank you everyone at the North Grenville Curling Club for your kind, memorial donation. We are another step closer to bringing a CT Scanner to KDH.

For more information, stories and events about the Crossroads CT Scanner $2.2 Million Campaign, including how you can donate, visit The Crossroads Campaign.

North Grenville Monday Afternoon Women’s Curling League donated $377 to the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign in memory of their fellow curler, Kim Ferris.

KDH Foundation Board Chair, Margret Norenberg, along with Kristy Carriere, KDH Foundation Coordinator, were delighted to receive a donation for the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign from Josh Kardish, Senior Vice President of eQuinelle Homes Ltd. Supporting charitable endeavours in eQuinelle communities aligns with the company’s mission to enhance lives by crafting exceptional places to live, work and play and their commitment to do what is right. "For every eQ Home built in eQuinelle, a contribution will be made to the KDH Foundation". Thank you!

Chief of Staff, Dr. Colin Sentongo and KDH Foundation Board Chair, Margret Norenberg, were delighted to receive a gift of $50,000 for the CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign from Mary Taggart, on behalf of the Taggart Parkes Foundation which is committed to fostering healthy communities, with an emphasis on improving health care services. Dr. Sentongo expressed his deep appreciation, “The entire Medical Staff thanks you for this gift!” 

The Mountain and District Lions Club has generously donated $25,000 to the KDH Foundation CT Scanner Crossroads Campaign. Margret Norenberg, KDH Foundation Chair (left) and Frank Vassallo, KDH CEO (right) were very pleased to receive the gift from Lions member, Nathan Lang, at their March Lions Club meeting. Thank you, Mountain Lions, for your wonderful Campaign support!