VGH receives $18.4m gift from late philanthropist
He escaped the Holocaust and it led him to fully embracing Tikkun Olam, the concept in Judaism which means repairing the world through acts of goodness and charity.
Leon Judah Blackmore died two years ago at age 81, but following an $18.4 million posthumous gift from his philanthropic foundation, Centennial Pavilion at Vancouver General Hospital will be renamed the Leon Judah Blackmore Pavilion.
Blackmore’s gift will be spread out over six years — $6 million was earmarked for a fully equipped, stateof-the-art “hybrid” operating room; $5 million will go toward men’s health and wellness programs and research led by Dr. David Kuhl; $5 million for a new cardiology diagnostic centre in the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre; $2.2 million for the expansion of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at UBC Hospital; and $200,000 for cardiology research.
Blackmore, an immigrant from Poland whose family fled to Canada after escaping the Nazis, donated money throughout his lifetime toward causes that helped humanity and animals. He was the founding donor for the University of B.C. Innocence Project and has given much to Holocaust education and memorials.
The $18.4 million to the hospital is striking not only for its largesse as one of the biggest in the hospital’s history but also in its symbolic sum. As VGH urologist Dr. Larry Goldenberg said during Wednesday’s announcement, the Hebrew word for life (chai) has a numerical value — 18 — so giving gifts in multiples of 18 represents the gift of life. The objective is the money will buy better health care for B.C. residents.
“When you come from a background where everything is taken away from you and you have to start life over, everything is appreciated,” Goldenberg said, referring to the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the gratitude and generosity Blackmore embraced after becoming a successful businessman in Canada.
Goldenberg said Blackmore (who changed his name from Schwartzman), never married or had children, and was one of seven children born to Orthodox Jewish parents. When he moved to Vancouver from Winnipeg as a young adult, he became a real estate developer and investor.
A decade ago, he was referred to interventional cardiologist Dr. Jaap Hamburger. At the hospital event Wednesday, Hamburger said when the angioplasty procedure he performed on Blackmore was over, the first thing his patient asked about was not how the medical treatment went but “how can I help you?”
“It was never about himself. He only thought about how he could use his fortune to give back to society, to make the world a better place,” said Hamburger.