A Manitoba man who met his late wife as a patient at Victoria Hospital 70 years ago has become the largest cumulative donor in the Victoria Hospital Foundation’s history.
Will Tishinski, 92, and his family unveiled a plaque Friday at Victoria Hospital honouring his wife Mavis, a nurse who spent decades working at the hospital in south Winnipeg.
His latest gift, made in her memory, totals more than $531,000 and will fund upgrades to a minimally invasive surgical suite, now renamed the Mavis Tishinski Surgical Suite.
“My wife worked for 30 years in the Victoria Hospital, primarily in the operating room, and she really enjoyed her career,” Tishinski said. “When the opportunity presented itself to make a donation to upgrade the surgical suite, it was a wonderful opportunity for our family to preserve her memory.”
The foundation said Mavis was among the first nurses trained in laparoscopic surgery at the hospital.
Jessica Miller, CEO of the Victoria Hospital Foundation, called the donation “transformational.” She said the couple’s cumulative giving now tops $1 million.
Miller said gifts of this size are rare. She said the couple’s previous donations went to support the Tranquility Trail, an outdoor space supporting mental health patients that opened in 2023, and a sensory lounge for patients living with dementia.
The foundation said it hopes to renovate more surgical suites in the coming years, calling it one of its primary fundraising priorities going forward.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the potential is, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the Tishinski gift,” Miller said.
The gift traces back to a chance encounter in 1956, when Tishinski — then a fourth-year engineering student at the University of Manitoba — was admitted to Victoria Hospital and met a student nurse on his ward.
“It was kind of a dark moment in my life, because I had to write my final exams within six weeks, and I had a job that I didn’t know I was going to be able to fulfill,” he said. “Things were pretty bleak when I first got into the hospital.”
That changed when he met a young woman on his ward.
“There was this incredibly pretty student nurse, and of course it was Mavis,” Tishinski said. “That’s how it all started, and that’s how I met her, and so a good thing happened in the end.”
Tishinski said he and Mavis both grew up in rural communities — he in Roblin, Man., and she in Gainsborough, Sask. — before they each moved to Winnipeg, where they met.
“We were both very lonely — you’re a country boy and you come into the city, everything is so new — and it applied to her, and it applied to me,” he said. “We kind of had the same loneliness, if I can use that term, and it was a good match because of that, because we satisfied the yearning for each other, and she was a wonderful person.”
The couple went on to marry and remained together for 67 and a half years until Mavis died in April at the age of 88.
“She was a wonderful person. So, it was very easy to fall in love with her,” said Tishinski, who spent over three decades working with Manitoba Hydro and retired from the position of vice-president.
“Mavis was a very kind, caring, compassionate person, and she was — I would term as — a perfect nurse. But more than that, she was a perfect wife, and that’s where my life had changed,” Tishinski said.
“I’ve always said that she was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
