Katie’s Cottage kicked off its 10th anniversary celebrations last week with a special event bringing corporate supporters together at the Access Event Centre in Morden.
Tracy Dandeneau (far left), Jeremy Dick, and Gabrielle Konowalchuk (far right) from People Corporation with Katie Cares’ Ruth Reimer at a wine and cheese event held in the charity’s honour last week
The come-and-go wine and cheese reception was hosted by People Corporation—a Winnipeg company so impressed by the work of the respite home that they wanted to do something to help them celebrate a decade of community impact.
“My husband had foot surgery across the street at Boundary Trails, so I walked into Katie’s Cottage and had to get involved,” shared Gabrielle Konowalchuk, a business development consultant with People Corp. “I learned the story and fell in love with Ruth [Reimer, Katie Cares CEO] and here we are.”
Having a place to come and get away from the hospital environment was a gift, Konowalchuk said.
“I only heard about it because the hospital mentioned I could stay there if I needed to. I had no idea what I was walking into. It was beautiful … I was just in awe.”
She went back to work inspired to do something to help Katie Cares, which runs the cottage.
“I got back to the office and sat my VP down and said, ‘We need to get involved in this. It’s a great organization, great people.’”
Jeremy Dick, a group benefit consultant with People Corp., observed that the story of Katie’s Cottage is an inspiring example of people coming together to support one another.
“We need more of this in the world today,” he said. “It really speaks to the community here in Morden and Winkler more than anything else … things like what Katie’s Cottage represents really speaks to the value of community and what people can do when they really put their minds towards it.”
People Corporation reps reached out to businesses across Southern Manitoba to invite them to the gathering last week, where they could learn more about the work of Katie Cares and how they can help them in their mission.
“We made a lot of phone calls in support of Katie Cares, just to bring people out and give them a good kick-off to their 10-year anniversary,” Konowalchuk said, noting they plan to continue their relationship with the non-profit, potentially hosting similar awareness and fundraising events in the future.
Ruth Reimer said she was blown away by the company’s eagerness to organize this event on their behalf. These kind of partnerships are an integral next step for the organization as it looks at the next decade of service and beyond.
“The southern Manitoba area, they’ve given so much to Katie Cares. Without them, we wouldn’t be anywhere. The community support, the business support,” she said. “But we also have to look at it and recognize people are coming here from all over the province, people are asking, ‘How can we get involved?’ We’re operating on a provincial level, for sure.”
The milestone anniversary celebrations will continue with a big community celebration July 25, where everyone will be invited down to the cottage for a day of tours, music, inflatables for the kids, and food.
They’ll then cap off the year with their annual online auction and Celebration of Life fashion show in September.
Katie Cares is also teaming up with the Winnipeg Kinsmen for a Kin Kar raffle for a $60,000 Murray Auto Group dealership voucher and 50/50 draw. The draw will take place June 22. Ticket information is available at katiecares.ca.
A Decade Of Caring
Looking back, it’s hard to believe how fast the past 10 years have flown by.
“You blink and we’re here,” Reimer said, reflecting on how they’ve learned so much in that time about how best to provide the care and support guests to Katie’s Cottage need.
“I think the model has stayed very much the same, except that we’ve made that model stronger,” she observed. “The foundation is so much stronger. The whole concept is stronger because people understand it now.
“People know they can leave the hospital and come here for the day, overnight—whatever they need,” Reimer said.
Day drop-ins are completely free, while overnight stays come with a modest fee that is a fraction of what a family would have to pay to stay in other accommodations.
They seek to provide a homelike environment, a refuge for people when they need to stay close to the hospital. Last year they rented out 890 rooms, welcoming upwards of 1,650 overnight guests, alongside hundreds more people who simply stopped in for a cup of a coffee or a quiet place to pass the time.
“All those people who now don’t have to go sit in their car or go shopping aimlessly to kill some time while their loved one receives care,” Reimer said. “People need a break, they need a space where it’s quiet, where the noise and smell and all the hustle of bustle of the hospital isn’t, but they’re still close by.”
It’s pretty much exactly what Reimer’s late daughter, Kaitlyn, envisioned when she and her father first sketched out plans for a respite home years ago.
“She was at Boundary Trails, in the ICU, and she was very, very low. Her white cells were so low,” Reimer recalled. “I was going home and she said, ‘Mom, that’s so far.’”
The family lived in nearby Winkler, but even that short drive can seem much longer when a loved one is sick and in pain. And what about families who don’t live in the area, Kaitlyn wondered. Where do they go to recharge?
“When I left, she said to her dad, ‘Take that napkin and let’s draw a picture.’”
That sketch, which now hangs on the wall of Katie’s Cottage, was the seed for the facility it is today, depicting a space with plenty of common areas for people to gather and private bedrooms to stay the night.
After Kaitlyn’s death in 2012 at the age 15, her family picked up her dream and made it a reality. First continuing the Katie Cares charity which still provides thousands of Beanie Babies and care packages to children in hospitals across the region each year—an initiative Kaitlyn began before her death—and then later spearheading the push to get Katie’s Cottage built.
“I think she always believed it was going to happen, she was going to make it happen,” Reimer said. And, thanks to the support of the community back then and through to today, it did.
“When we started back in 2014, we had zero dollars in the bank for this,” Reimer said. “We raised $700,000—enough to build this place and start off with no debt. It was just phenomenal the support we got.”
In the years since, Reimer and her team of staff and volunteers have remained humbled by the opportunity to be there for families experiencing everything life has to offer—from the joy of birth (and they’ve actually had one expectant mother deliver their baby right at the cottage) through to end of life care.
“Maybe a loved one can’t go far from the hospital, but their family wants to do something special for them one more time, so they have a barbecue in our backyard,” Reimer said. “We’ve done that for families, giving them a chance just to be together here.
“It’s full circle. Birth and death, those things are happening here, and in between are all of the other struggles that we have to go through,” she said. “We’re honoured to be here for people. And I’m honoured that I get to meet so many wonderful people from all across the province.”
If Reimer has one message for the community, it’s this: thank you.
“Those two words don’t do it justice. But thank you. There’s no way we could have done any of this without everyone—and I mean everyone—as a community of southern Manitoba coming together and realizing the dream of a 13-year-old was something that was very needed and has had such an impact.”
