OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a public statement issued by Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital board chair, published Jan. 31.
The Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital (OSMH) board chair's statement explaining why the board is moving to disenfranchise hundreds of supporters reminds me as to why the OSMH Foundation office is located where it is on the north side of Mississaga Street in Orillia.
When I became Chair of the 2003 OSMH capital campaign we had our first few meetings in OSMH. We were jerked around. Meetings were being cancelled because the hospital suddenly needed the space, although they had set the time and space for the original meeting. As well we had trouble getting free parking for volunteers.
Rose Longo, chair of the OSMH Foundation at the time, knew of my frustrations. One day she took me across Mississaga Street to a former real estate office located on the lot to the west of the present Foundation office.
It was perfect for our purposes. It had office space at the front, a large meeting room at the back and plenty of free parking for volunteers.
As chair, I sat on the OSMH Foundation board. As the campaign was winding down the Foundation board was asked by OSMH how much space it needed in the new hospital for the Foundation office. I took the position that the success of the campaign was partly due to the fact that it wasn't physically based in the hospital.
Bureaucrats run hospitals. Entrepreneurs raise funds. The two have very different mindsets.
They don't necessarily mix. The Foundation board agreed with my position. The Foundation office remains on the north side of Mississaga.
Disenfranchising hundreds of corporate members who paid $25 each for their membership and replacing them with the opportunity to be a “Friend of Soldiers'” doesn't make sense to me as a former fundraiser. But then, I doubt that I would ever have been a successful bureaucrat.
Doug Lewis,
Orillia
