Marian Boxer said the Mayo Clinic was once a little hospital in the middle of nowhere surrounded by snow and she believes the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre can achieve that same status.
“I would love to see the Thunder Bay Regional do the same thing,” she said. “To draw in people from all over the world that want to do that research, education, and be reported all over the world and then everybody wants to come here.”
Boxer was joined by her brother, Sam Bachinski, at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre last week to announce a more than $500,000 donation of securities on behalf of the Bachinski family.
The donation of $507,840 is a little more than a $501,000 donation made by the family in 2019, bringing the total amount gifted to the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation to more than $1 million.
“We just did it in honour of our parents,” Boxer said. “Our mother and father were very generous people, and their philosophy was to do unto others, and we are trying to do the same.”
The donation was made on behalf of the entire Bachinski family, including Boxer, Linda Drindak and her husband Paul, and Sam Bachinski and his wife Margot Freitag, along with their children Mitchell and Claudia.
Marian and Sam’s mother, Anne Bachinski, was one of the first patients to receive care at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre for kidney cancer. She passed away in 2004 and later that same year, her husband, Sam Bachinski, passed away of a heart attack on Christmas Day.
“They took very good care of our parents,” Sam Bachinski said. “Our mother had great treatment here and so did our dad. Recently they did great work on me and they are a great facility and I am glad they are expanding.”
The family asked that their first donation be divided between cancer care and cardiac care. This year, $400,000 of the donation is going to the Our Hearts at Home campaign to bring cardiac surgery to the hospital and the remaining $100,000 is going towards the installation of radiation therapy equipment in cancer care.
“Both of the programs touch a lot of people who have cancer and cardiac issues, so it’s a really big impact today,” said Glenn Craig, chief executive officer of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation.
Craig added the generosity of the Bachinski family demonstrates that philanthropy has not gone away in the city of Thunder Bay.
“We have been successful with the online gaming but there is huge needs to take care of our own here,” he said. “It just shows there is a vote of confidence and there is still a vital role for philanthropy and raising money for health care here.”
Bachinski said it always leaves the family with a great feeling to donate the money to the hospital.
“There is a lot of need here and it’s a great feeling to be able to help out,” he said.
And the family does hope to be back again in five years with another donation after they have saved up more money.
“My focus is more on thinking forward now as opposed to the need right now,” Boxer said. “It’s what can we do going in the future. Given that you are a teaching hospital, you guys have a terrific opportunity to be reported all over the world.”