A family trip to the CN Tower left a lasting impression on Richard Lake.
It numbers among many highlights of a storied life for the 95-year-old resident of Sunnybrook’s Veterans Centre, the largest in Canada. A diesel electric mechanic for the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Western Air Command during the Second World War, Richard ran a power plant and maintained generators on an air force base on Vancouver Island. He travelled from Toronto shortly after he enlisted at age 19.
“Even though he has short-term memory loss, he remembers the visit,” says Terry Rutledge, the youngest of Richard’s three daughters.
Richard never stopped smiling, from the moment Terry’s youngest son travelled with him by bus from Sunnybrook to the CN Tower. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and a turkey dinner with a view was waiting at the top.
The trip was enabled through Sunnybrook’s Grant a Wish program, supported entirely by donors.
“When he first heard about the Grant a Wish program, he said he didn’t need anything,” recalls Terry. “We came up with the idea when we realized he had never been to the top of the CN Tower.”
Terry couldn’t believe the puff of steam they first saw across the lake: it was Niagara Falls. “We had the perfect opportunity to show my dad all the neighbourhoods he had lived in and around Toronto.”
As the restaurant rotated, Terry pointed out West Hill, where Richard was born; Oshawa, where he grew up; downtown neighbourhoods where Richard rode his bicycle as a young delivery boy for a butcher shop and grocery store; the Masonic Temple at Yonge and Davenport, the ballroom where Richard met his soul mate Audrey just after the war; Keele St. and the 401, where Richard built a house in the 1950s; Birch Cliff, near Scarborough Bluffs, where he lived as a child; and St. Catharines, across the lake, where Richard and his wife of 60 years eventually retired.
“It brought back so many memories,” says Terry. “We reminisced and reviewed his whole life.”
Granting wishes
Sunnybrook’s Grant a Wish program is an exciting resident-focused initiative dedicated to fulfilling lifelong dreams of those who live at the Veterans Centre.
Entirely supported by generous donors, the program strives to provide an enhanced quality of life through the realization of heartfelt wishes.
Launched in 2005, the Grant a Wish program sets out to grant at least one wish for every Veteran in Sunnybrook’s care. It fulfils as many as 132 individual wishes a year.
Each month wishes are collected by a coordinator and designated as either a gem wish (10 per month are granted) or a pearl wish (one per month). Our Veterans are eligible for up to three wishes.
Wishes granted range from requests as unique as an elaborate family dinner at a hotel to the more modest desire for maple walnut ice cream for lunch every day for a month. On one occasion, donor support enabled a Veteran to take a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls. Other wishes include: tickets to sporting events or concerts, riding a horse, reading a bestseller with large print, throwing a football or trips to a veteran’s hometown.
