‘Epic donation’ a boon for Georgina women’s shelter
After heartfelt conversation, donor gave $700K but asked that she remain anonymous
You know how sometimes, when you meet someone for the first time, something just clicks?
That’s how it was for Michelle Smith when she was introduced to LB at a golf event in 2019.
Smith, executive director of Sandgate Women’s Shelter in Georgina, liked LB right off the bat; they could have chatted all afternoon. But life (and a pandemic) got in the way and it was a year before they reconnected again.
When they did, Smith was in for a shock.
LB had felt the connection, too. A Toronto resident who’d been cottaging on Lake Simcoe from the age of 12, she was wrapping up a successful career and turning her mind toward “giving back.”
She’d worked hard all her life and felt blessed.
“My mom and dad came here after the war. I saw how hard they worked and how kind they were to people.”
Which is why, when she sold 80 per cent of her business, LB knew she needed nothing herself — except to help others.
The idea of shelter, or lack thereof, troubled her. To think someone could be without a place to call home, she just couldn’t fathom it.
LB worked with St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation providing housing subsidies to at-risk youth. She purchased hotel rooms for doctors fighting COVID-19. Now she wanted to do something for women and children escaping violence.
There were several programs in Toronto but LB’s heart remained in Keswick, Jackson’s Point and Newmarket, where she’d spent happy summers.
She remembered Michelle Smith, that brief connection, how it seemed they’d spoken directly from their hearts and
how she’d really wanted to talk some more.
And so, last fall, they reconnected — outdoors because of COVID — and they chatted for a good two hours about everything under the sun, all the many things they had in common, raising children, their shared heritage, how they’d both lost their husbands.
That last part, LB says, was big.
“I lost my husband, very suddenly in Jamaica on holidays. Terrible story. She lost her husband too. When you lose your partner of many years, it cannot be described. It changes your life completely. But you move on. What choice do you have?”
Their conversation meandered onto Smith’s latest dream: finding a way to buy the property behind Sandgate’s shelter in Georgina that had just become available.
The agency struggled with extreme overcrowding. They’d had to close two outreach offices because of funding challenges. This house would be perfect, a much-needed space to help the community.
They had a three-week window to make it happen — if only they had the funding.
On impulse, LB reached across the table, her eyes welling with tears.
“Michelle,” she said, “don’t worry. I’m buying it for you.”
LB laughs about it now.
“I didn’t even give it a second thought. I think Michelle almost fainted.”
LB wrote Sandgate a cheque for $700,000 to make the dream a reality. There was one stipulation: she must remain anonymous.
The joy of giving, LB said, was reward enough.
With this “epic donation” — the largest in the agency’s 28-year history — Smith says Sandgate can do great things.
Support teams that had been meeting women in parks or local coffee shops will have a safe space for private counselling. Sandgate will be able to extend its current property to almost an acre with plenty of room for creative new programming.
“This level of donation in our small community, it’s just unheard of.”
Smith is struck by the “goodness” of this stranger who asked for no recognition, who simply “put trust in us and believed in us.
“Just this one, genuine conversation forever changed the course of direction of our organization.”
LB and Smith plan to continue working together through Sandgate and they are keen to share their story, hoping to show how there’s value in nurturing every relationship and, in these dark days of isolation, in opening our hearts to each other.