Premiere Kathleen Wynne visited Matthews House Hospice in Alliston this morning, where she toured the Highway 89 site and learned details of the facility's future location.
Founder Frank Taylor told the Premier details of the new building located at 131 Wellington St. East in Alliston.
A groundbreaking ceremony will be held April 27 with the facility scheduled to open in spring of 2018.
Taylor said the total cost for the new build is about $6M and so far just over $3.6M has been raised.
"A donor came forward and said we have a lot in town we'd like to give you the money to buy that lot...the same donor wrote us a cheque for a million dollars," Taylor told Wynne.
"It would have been wonderful if beside the donor cheque there was capitol money from the province," he joked.
At just under 30,000 square feet, the building will house the community hospice palliative care team, day programs, counseling and includes 10 residential hospice beds.
The main floor will have those residential rooms which will all open out to the garden.
"The bed can be rolled out onto a little patio if the family wants to go there. In this house and in the new house the garden will be an integral part of what we do and what we have," Taylor said.
The building includes libraries, family and staff resource rooms and training and educational facilities for the community.
The hospice discussed its need to raise $1 million for operations. Matthews House says it receives only four per cent of the money it requires to runs its programs from the province.
The facility has approximately 200 volunteers and the average stay is nine days compared to the provincial average 13.
Matthews House president Steve Aelick said he viewed the Premier's visit as recognition of all the work of volunteers and staff and an acknowledgement the community's needs.
"If you're talking wishes, we would love a couple million in capitol to finish our residence and we would like some funding for the community services," said Aelick.
"Right now we receive about $40,000 in funding for community services. That's the same funding we had when he had 40 clients. This year we had over 500 direct community clients and touched up to 1,700 with family members."
The hospice is not only about end of life care but quality of life and continuing of life for survivors. People with all kinds of diseases go there for support - social, spiritual, health care - and counseling.
In addition to the 500 clients, there were another 125 people in the past year who passed away at home.
Matthews House is planning more outreach to allow for in-home care.
"We know that 80 percent of people want to pass away at home. That's where they want to end their journey. So if we can make that a reality then the residence will still be full, but the important piece will be the 80 percent that are staying at home."
The Premier's visit was strictly a photo opportunity for the media and she took no questions.
It was one of several campaign-style stops Wynne was making in the region Thursday.
