2024: A Year Of Elevation & Celebration

Dear friends of the Foundation,

This year, we felt the strength of our community and pride within our hospitals. From all of us at the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, we thank you.

As I reflect on 2024, I am grateful for the trust you place in us to deliver new advancements and technologies for our hospitals—together with you, we have made them stronger. Over the last 12 months, healthcare innovation has been at the forefront of our work. We completed our $11 million Imaging is Power campaign, bringing a first-in-Canada approach to refurbish rather than replace three MRIs at Royal Jubilee (RJH) and Victoria General (VGH) hospitals, and to purchase a new CT Scanner, SPECT/CT Scanner and C-Arm with the latest technology, allowing our Victoria hospitals to have the newest machines in the province. Knowing that Island patients have access to the very best in imaging is a tremendously proud feeling. Completing a campaign like this, and seeing its impact firsthand already, was not only rewarding for our care teams and their patients, but we witnessed how strongly you, our donor family, felt about bringing new technologies to our local hospitals.

In the same vein, once we successfully completed that campaign, we felt the only way forward was to maintain the new heights we were reaching: to go bigger, and do better. We felt the confidence and strength from you that we were fundraising in areas that you believed strongly in, and pride in our abilities to be bold and set our sights on the new technologies that only the very best hospitals in Canada have. We knew that if there was ever a time to bring surgical robotics to our community, it was now.

Over the course of the year, we leaned into and learned from our impassioned surgical teams that advancing minimally invasive surgeries could change care journeys altogether, especially for cancer patients. Chief Urologist Dr. Jeff McCracken led the way. The benefits were obvious: to patients, to surgeons and their nursing teams, and to the healthcare system as a whole. We had early discussions with local families who believed in robotics and committed to helping in a profound way—with their support, RJH would be the 16^th hospital in Canada to operationalize a da Vinci Surgical System.

In October we launched It’s Time For Surgical Innovation, a $17 million campaign to bring robotics (~$10 million) and a carefully curated suite of minimally invasive surgical equipment (~$7 million) to our health authority for Island patients. Today, we have reached $11 million of our $17 million goal, all thanks to over 2,100 donors like you. Thank you for the impact you are making.

In order to do great things, you need to surround yourself with great people. Our volunteer spokespeople are shining examples of what good looks and feels like. Learning from Shirley Hunter and Steve Marta about how incredible their hospital care has been has reminded us how important it is to ensure our care teams have the resources they need to do their best work. Our care teams mean everything to us and to our community.

Our volunteer Steering Committees for both Miracle on the Mountain and Visions reached new heights this year, when both galas raised record-breaking totals. Amy Ratcliff’s undeniable leadership rallied the Westshore community to raise $1 million for VGH’s new CT Scanner, and Charlotte Salomon’s inspiring leadership encouraged an amazing $2.75 million for surgical innovation. Both women and their volunteer committees worked incredibly hard for our hospitals and the patients who need them. Our volunteer Steering Committee for the 47^th Annual Uplands Heart Tournament—one of B.C.’s longest standing charitable golf tournament—supported our hospitals with the purchase of a portable ultrasound for our Heart Health team. We thank Kathy Thomson, Karen Krysa, Richard Brownsey, and Jim Weaver for chairing this year’s tournament. Volunteers have been the beating heart of so much innovation and pride that surround our hospitals. Over 150 volunteers showed up to support these community-focused events—and many more supported our work by joining us in our office.

Our volunteer Board of Directors is committed to having the Foundation be a leading charity on Vancouver Island with ambitious goals that translate to incredible impact. This year, we thanked our outgoing Chair Donnie Wing for his leadership, and welcomed our new Board Chair Joan Yates, who will continue to lead the prudent stewardship of your donations and honour the good around us.