$750,000 raised by Hazel McCallion Walk will help pay for new Mississauga hospital that will be biggest in Canada
Published June 7, 2023 at 10:34 am
A record $750,000 raised at this past Sunday’s Hazel McCallion Walk for Health will go directly to help build Mississauga’s new state-of-the-art hospital, which is expected to be the largest in Canada when completed.
The second annual fundraising event, organized by Trillium Health Partners Foundation and held at Port Credit Memorial Park, attracted some 2,100 participants including community members, hospital and foundation staff, and professional staff.
Money was raised through sponsorships, vendors and donations to individual walkers and teams, with Mississauga-based Orlando Corporation’s matching gift doubling the donations portion for a grand total of nearly $750,000.
“It was a huge honour to meet and work with Hazel McCallion in her last few years and this event perfectly captured what mattered to her: supporting Trillium Health Partners so that the hospital can keep up with the growing needs of her community,” foundation president and CEO Caroline Riseboro said in a news release. “She would have been so proud to see everyone out walking and enjoying themselves to advance our new hospital.”
Construction of The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital, which will be built on the site of the current Mississauga Hospital at Hurontario St. and The Queensway, will begin sometime in 2025. A completion date has not yet been set, but officials said earlier it’ll be about a decade or so down the road.
The 24-storey health-care facility, named for the local developer/philanthropist who gifted $105 million to the project, entered the development phase earlier this year.
Videos
Hospital officials said earlier that the state-of-the-art hospital will be about 2.8 million square feet in size, nearly three times the size of the current health-care facility.
As one of Canada’s largest community-based hospital systems, Trillium Health Partners (THP) is comprised of Mississauga Hospital and Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga and the Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke.
Once the new hospital opens, THP officials say it will provide “more beds, shorter wait times and greater specialization closer to home for patients and their families.”
The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital will also provide doctors and staff with leading-edge equipment and resources needed to deliver exceptional care for the growing community, officials add.
Twenty-three cutting-edge operating rooms, up from the 14 older ORs currently in use, will be housed in the new facility.
Additionally, the emergency department will be one of the largest in Ontario and some 350 new beds will be added to bring the total to more than 950. More than 80 per cent of the beds will be in private rooms.
In advance of the new hospital construction, work began late last fall on construction of an eight-storey parking facility on the parcel of land that has housed the hospital since 1958.
The new hospital is badly needed, according to THP, which notes that over the next 20 years its three hospitals will experience more demand for services than any other hospital system in Ontario.
The second Hazel McCallion Walk for Health took place on June 4 at Port Credit Memorial Park. (Photo: Trillium Health Partners Foundation)
INsauga's Editorial Standards and Policies