When the CEO of the Hospice Fredericton, Cindy Sheppard, first heard that they were receiving a $100,000 donation, she was speechless.
On Sept. 23, Hospice Fredericton announced that the Honourable Joan Kingston Foundation, sponsored by Fredericton Senator Joan Kingston, had chosen them for their first donation — a total of $100,000.
Sheppard said when she received the initial email from Kingston asking to meet in person, she thought it was simply a discussion about the clinic, as the senator has a background in healthcare. She didn’t anticipate what came next.
“She said ‘we’d like to make a donation,’ and I said, ‘great’ and then she said, ‘it’s $100,000,’ and I said not much at first because I lost my breath,” said Sheppard.
“But I thanked her so profusely.”
The donation will help them provide the equipment needed to support patients. With 11,000 total patients over eight years of service, Sheppard said they recently bought four new beds, each costing around $20,000.
“Those are the types of things that sometimes people forget that we have to purchase,” she said.
Hospice Fredericton is a 10-bed facility that provides end-of-life care to people with terminal illness, along with grief counselling to family members and the general community for anyone struggling with the loss of a loved one.
While hospice has been around since 2016, Sheppard got on board in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the work Hospice Fredericton does in the community is what drew her to the role.
“[It was] the care that it provides to people at such a difficult point in their life … just being honoured to be a part of someone’s end-of-life journey and being there to support them at that most difficult time,” she said.
Although Sheppard didn’t have much experience in healthcare, she previously worked with not-for-profits like hospice, which she says helps “fill the gap” in services for vulnerable communities that aren’t addressed by profit or government sectors.
As a non-profit organization, the hospice relies heavily on volunteers, their board of directors and support from the community. Around 30 per cent of their funding is government, 40 per cent is fundraising initiatives like their Hospice Boutique and the last 30 per cent comes from the community.
This is why the $100,000 donation is so impactful to Sheppard and hospice.
“It means so much to us. First of all, the amount, second of all, that we were the top of her list in terms of being the first to receive from her foundation,” said Sheppard.
The Joan Kingston Foundation was recently created when a few of Kingston’s friends reached out with the idea of creating a foundation in her name.
She said it was a “big honour” to be part of supporting important organizations like hospice.
“I’m able to help support initiatives that enhance healthcare, community, well being, social justice,” said Kingston. “It’s very rewarding to be able to do something concrete for some of the organizations that I’ve admired for many years.”
Currently, Kingston is a member of the Canadian Senate, but she also has a background in nursing and healthcare. As a UNB alum, she graduated from nursing school and went on to be the co-founder of the Fredericton Downtown Community Health Centre and now is an advisor to UNB Fredericton’s faculty of nursing.
Kingston said her interest in nursing came from her mother, who was also a nurse, but her passion for helping others goes further back.
“My mother was a nurse and she always got a lot of satisfaction from her work and enjoyed her work. It took me a while to kind of come around,” she said. “I was always interested in helping people who needed my help the most.”
This desire to help others is what underlies the Joan Kingston Foundation and its support of Hospice Fredericton, as well as her respect for the organization. Kingston said she knows people personally who have been cared for at the facility.
“[They] were able to be cared for in their last days with dignity and comfort through hospice,” she said. “It’s a very important organization … and helps a lot of people in the Fredericton area.”
The foundation will be continuing with donations in the future, but in the meantime, Hospice Fredericton and Sheppard will be putting the $100,000 to use.
“It will allow us to make sure that no patient goes without anything that they need,” said Sheppard. “It was an honour to be recognized for the hard work that the staff do here and know that the community supports us.”
