Baycrest

100 years of volunteerism at Baycrest W hen asked why, at age 94, he was still volunteering at Baycrest after 60 years, Lou Stillman recited the lyrics to a popular, old song: Make someone happy, Make just one someone happy, And you will be happy, too. "That's why I volunteer," he explained. "When I started at Baycrest three years after the home first opened on Bathurst Street, I saw the benefits people were getting," he said. "I've always been a hands- on volunteer working directly with people, but no matter how you give your time, it makes an impact." * In his six decades of volunteering, Stillman had a front row seat to Baycrest's evolution from a Jewish home for the aged in downtown Toronto to an academic health sciences centre renowned worldwide. Despite all the changes he witnessed, one thing remained constant – the participation of committed volunteers and donors in guiding and supporting Baycrest in its mission to improve the well-being of people as they age. In the early 20th century, moved by the plight of elderly Jewish people with no family to care for them, volunteers led the charge and in 1918 founded the first ethnically distinct home of its kind in Ontario. With only a small staff to run the home in a house on Cecil Street, volunteers were an integral part of the residents' daily care. They also cooked, sewed, did laundry, visited and continued to seek donations of all kinds – including the services of medical staff. When the new Jewish Home for the Aged and Baycrest Hospital opened in a four-storey building in North York in 1954, the community celebrated the efforts of volunteers who planned and fundraised to build the first combined home for the aged and hospital in Ontario. "The foresight and determination of community volunteers created this wonderful new facility. Volunteers were involved in every aspect, from leadership on the Board to running programs for residents and patients," says long- serving volunteer Tobie Bekhor, who began volunteering in 1985 and served as a past president of the Women's Auxiliary and former chair of the Volunteer Advisory Committee. "As the campus grew, and a new home and a hospital were built, more staff were hired, and the volunteer program had to adjust to meet the needs of people with more challenging physical and cognitive conditions." One of the highlights of her extensive volunteer career at Baycrest, she says, was helping to move residents into the new Apotex Centre, Jewish Home for the Aged in March 2000. "It was an exciting day," she recalls. For Adrienne and Murray Levinter, it's difficult to single out one specific highlight in their long association with Baycrest. "Every Baycrest milestone has been significant and we feel a part of it all," says Adrienne, who worked as a full-time employee in Volunteer Services for 15 years and started volunteering with her husband in 1982, just days after retiring. Even while she was on staff, Adrienne volunteered her time to help with fundraising projects and client programs organized by the Men's Service Group (MSG). "To be a volunteer, you have to believe in the product," she says. Murray, now 92, was active in the MSG and on the Building Committee for the new Baycrest Hospital, the first geriatric hospital in Canada, which opened in 1986. 6 In the early years, volunteers were part of the residents' daily care Women's Auxiliary gift shop 1971 Three-year-old volunteer and his mother delight a 99-year-old resident with one of their visits. Summer 1980 volunteers waiting to board a bus with a hospital patient

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