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Friends of the Golden and District Hospital surpass $100,000 in donations

Each year, Friends of the Golden and District Hospital raise funds to help pay for additional equipment and useful items.
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Each year, Friends of the Golden and District Hospital raise funds to help pay for additional equipment and useful items.

At Thanksgiving, the group hosted the Giving Thanks to the Golden and District Hospital 2018 fundraising campaign, and raised $13,150 to go toward important items. Most of the funds were raised online, amounting to $10,450, and $2,700 was donated in cheques to the group.

The fundraiser began after Keith Hern’s wife died in 2015, and it has continued every year since. The fundraiser is open year-round, and includes a final two-week push right before Thanksgiving.

“It’s all manners of things. Chairs, we bought furniture for Durand Manor, all sorts of things,” Hern said.

The donations go toward purchasing things that the hospital and Durand Manor wouldn’t normally be able to afford. Most of their equipment is provided through Interior Health, but the fundraiser adds a boost and assists the two places in making additional purchases.

Friends of the Golden and District Hospital has raised more than $100,000 for the hospital and Durand Manor since the fundraiser began.

“Should you be unfortunate enough to use the facilities, you’ve got better facilities there. We’ve gone through all the emergency rooms, the surgery room, the prenatal room, Durand Manor, they’ve all benefited to some degree from the equipment that we have purchased in past years,” he said.

The time of year gets everyone thinking about what they need to give thanks for, and Hern thinks the time of year for the fundraiser chose them.

“I think as a community, we should be very thankful to have that hospital. Not every community this size has one,” he said. “And, it’s not just the residents of Golden that benefit from it. Everyone who travels on the highway benefits from it, everyone who skis at the ski hill benefits from it, anyone who has crashed their bike has benefited from it. It benefits not just the residents, but the whole tourist industry.”

To read the blog, or to make a donation to Friends of the Golden and District Hospital, go to www.friendsgdh.blogspot.com.