For Terry and Denis Sirois St. Ann’s Home represents hope and caring. But it is mainly because of universal values they hold dear that they see lived out at St. Ann’s that inspired them to give: Catholic values of dignity, respect and basic empathy in caring for the residents. “My uncle and grandmother both lived at the Home, and we saw the care and compassion they received during their time there,” says Denis.

Terry adds, “we believe that every child deserves the best chance in life. So, we support education. And we want the best standard of health care here, so we invest in hospitals and training of physicians. And in the case of St. Ann’s, I’ve seen that senior care is not a priority in society in general. We will all be seniors sometime. We both have aging parents. Aging concerns us all. We want a facility that is caring, kind, homey, for our parents. These people (in St. Ann’s) have given over 60 years of their life to this community and should be able to live well and comfortably. Hope is one of the things that allows us to live life fully right to the end. When people are suffering from dementia, they may find common ground in their faith and the familiarity of it hopefully helps them to thrive better. The Chapel and spiritual care offers this.”

Admittedly, there are many competing places and causes to which Terry and Denis could give their charity dollars. But the majority of their philanthropy has been to local causes. “We live here, our family is here, we appreciate the opportunities the city and province have given us. And we believe we must care for every member of our community, so our giving emphasis is to build better lives for everyone here,” says Denis.

Furthermore, Denis suggests that, “this could be our story. We must ask ourselves, what do we want our final days to look like? This gift is investing in the future. We hope our gift will help make tangible changes to allow residents of St. Ann’s more independence and dignity”.

The Sirois’ parting words are, “we also hope that those who have the capacity will consider St. Ann’s because we all may need some kind of assistance as we grow old.”

Denis and Terry have given $100,000 to completely renovate 2 resident rooms in the Home.

Thank you so much Terry and Denis!