The Hospital for Sick Children

In June 2019, the Peter Gilgan Foundation donated $100 million to The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the largest single gift ever made to SickKids. Together with donations made to other hospitals and health-care organizations to date, this makes Peter Gilgan and the Peter Gilgan Foundation the largest benefactor to hospitals in Canada.

This $100 million gift will support the SickKids VS Limits campaign – a key element of redeveloping the SickKids campus – including building a new patient care tower that will be named the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower.

"To continue to have the opportunity to support SickKids is an honour and is also very humbling. I'm in a privileged position to be able to make this gift, and I know it's going to be used to help children today and in the future live longer and healthier lives. I want to thank my family, both the Gilgans and my Mattamy family, whose unwavering support over many years has made this commitment possible."

– Peter Gilgan, Founder & CEO of Mattamy Asset Management

SickKids broke ground in October 2019 on the first of two new buildings. The first building, the Patient Support Centre, will house the SickKids Learning Institute with 1,200 world-class trainees, a Simulation Centre for hands-on teaching, and provide 6,000 professionals, management and support staff with up-to-date spaces to do their best work. 

The second building, the Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower, will be a new acute care hospital tower that will help SickKids continue to provide some of the best paediatric care in the world and will include:

• Addition of 144 beds to meet the demands of modern, family-centred care (totalling 430 beds)

• More (approximately 120, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit included) critical care beds built as single patient rooms to improve infection prevention and patient privacy for better outcomes.

• A new blood and marrow transplant unit with specialized ventilation systems to ensure Ontario’s sickest children are receiving the highest quality of care. 95 per cent of solid organ and bone marrow transplants in Ontario are performed at SickKids.

• Approximately 19 operating suites, where space will be adaptable to accommodate new technologies and procedures – ~3 more than our current capacity.

• A new, Emergency Department featuring 51 treatment spaces – 12 more than what we currently have. 

The Peter Gilgan Family Patient Care Tower is estimated to be completed in 2029. 

"We are extraordinarily grateful to Peter Gilgan and the Peter Gilgan Foundation for their ongoing philanthropic leadership and dedication to SickKids. Our vision for the children's hospital of the future includes the construction of a state-of-the-art building, matching our world-class care with family-friendly spaces for patients and their loved ones. This gift is unparalleled and will help ensure our vision becomes reality. In conjunction with a commitment from the Government of Ontario, and support from other donors, this gift will help SickKids continue to advance children's health through exemplary clinical care, breakthrough research, and teaching excellence both at home and around the world."

– Dr. Ronald Cohn, President & CEO, SickKids

"Generosity of this magnitude is transformative. We continue to be grateful to visionary philanthropists like Peter Gilgan whose historic gift today will help change the future of children's health. The SickKids VS Limits fundraising campaign is the largest in Canadian health-care history and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help reimagine the SickKids campus. Today's gift takes us closer to reaching our goal of raising $1.3 billion through philanthropy and will undoubtedly inspire the community to help us continue to build the momentum needed to unleash the full potential of SickKids."

– Ted Garrard, CEO, SickKids Foundation