“The Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation has reached its $12-million goal for the Clinic 1 expansion capital campaign.
Officials with the foundation announced a $1-million lead gift from the J.T. Clark Family Foundation on Tuesday.
“We’re feeling very excited and quite humbled, to be frank,” Jeff McAloon, president and CEO of the hospital foundation, said in a phone interview. John Clark, the founder of the J.T. Clark Family Foundation, reached out to McAloon in early January after receiving care at the ambulatory clinic.”
J.T. Clark Family Foundation is happy to have helped Explore Lorneville Inc. raise $27,000 for a restoration and conservation project in the Musquash Head area. We matched donations to a total of $12,500.
New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame executive director Jamie Wolverton watches a video clip of Canadian soccer great Christine Sinclair on the 12 foot by 7 foot screen in the new 50-seat Alden R. Clark Theatre inside the hall and museum in downtown Fredericton.
Photo: Bruce Hallihan/The Daily Gleaner
If you haven’t been to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame lately, you’re in for a big surprise.
Although the hall and museum in-downtown Fredericton has lost “about 90 per cent” of foot traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic, executive director Jamie Wolverton says the downtime has been beneficial in another way.
The Building Inspiration legacy project, set up to coincide with the sports shrine’s 50th anniversary, is now complete.
“It’s fabulous to see it finished,” Wolverton said.
The centrepiece of the improvements is a SO-seat theatre and presentation space on the third floor to facilitate video screenings, seminars, presentations and special events.
“We’ve already got an event booked for the end of the month,” Wolverton said. “We’ll still have to have physical distancing in place, but it’s great to see things start to open up a bit. We’re anxious to start leveraging the space when we get back to whatever the new normal is.”
The Alden R. Clark Theatre, named after a hall of fame member, has nine TV screens mounted on the wall. Together, they can form one large, 12 foot by 7 foot screen.
“For the last piece of our fundraising campaign, we developed a seat sponsorship,” Wolverton said. “We reached out to honoured members and supporters and asked them to contribute $500 to sponsor one of the remaining 40 seats that weren’t spoken for.”
The J. T Clark Family Foundation matched each donation.
“So essentially they turned that into $1,000 per seat,” he said, “and we were able to raise an additional $40,000.”
The hallway next to the theatre has framed portraits of 18 of the 250 enshrined members.
The second floor features a ‘New Brunswick’s First” wall, with bilingual plaques recognizing achievements, and a display case nearby with artifacts of some men and women who are part of the ‘firsts’ accomplishments.
“Records change all the time, but the very first person to achieve something can’t be outdone,” Wolverton said.
A large display for the newest members of the sports hall has been moved to the main floor, next to the entrance.
The sports hall’s website has added a 3D virtual tour, “so you can feel like you’re walking through the building from home,” Wolverton said. “You can zoom in and read the writing on all the plaques, or zoom back out and see the layout like a dollhouse.”
By next summer, Wolverton hopes to “redo the virtual sports system, so we’ll have cutting-edge technology to keep the virtual sports enthusiasts even more engaged when they’re here.”
The 2020 hall of fame induction ceremony was postponed until 2021. It will be held April 24 at the Fredericton Convention Centre.
The latest inductees will be armwrestler Joyce King of Lower Hainesville, Miramichi basketball player and coach Pauline Lordon, UNB men’s hockey coach Gardiner MacDougall of New Maryland, golfer Kathy Meagher of Fredericton, paranordic skier and Shippagan native Louis Fortin and the Fredericton-based Wayne Tallon curling rink.
Sometimes a gift carries with it more than sixty years of love and music.
Such a gift is the new Wilma H. Clark Award(s), to be granted to Bachelor of Music Therapy students, thanks to the generosity of John T. Clark (’52 and DCL ’10) and his family via the J.T. Clark Family Foundation.
The story of the award began on the Labour Day weekend of 1953. Twenty-two-year-old John Clark was attending an end-of-season variety show put on by the summer staff of the Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. On stage was an attractive young woman with a beautiful alto singing voice. John grabbed his friend Gordon Dimock (’53), who was also on staff, and said, “Gordon, you have to introduce me to that person!” The attractive young woman was Wilma Hilton. The following summer, John and Wilma were married.
Presented to J. T. Clark Family Foundation, June 2020
“The J.T. Clark Family Foundation and J.T. Clark Family Cardiac Endowment has brought improved care with advanced postdoctoral research at the New Brunswick Heart Centre since the wonderful donation in 2013. Research brings top-notch doctors to our province, and top-notch technology.”
We are so excited to announce that The J. T. Clark Family Foundation has answered the call in our time of need and has pledged $24,000 for our Student Hunger Program! This means that we will be able to feed hundreds of hungry students and families affected by COVID-19 and the school closures on a weekly basis! Thank you to the J.T. Clark Family Foundation for your incredible support and for helping us fulfill our mandate of feeding Fredericton’s hungry. The J.T. Clark Family Foundation would also like to encourage the Fredericton Community to join in the fight to feed hungry students and families in the coming months by making a donation.
Students and staff at St. Stephen Middle School (SSMS) have reached their goal and by this fall their auditorium will be filled with brand new seats that have been purchased by various service groups, members of the community, and the J. T. Clark Family Foundation.
Sometimes a gift carries with it more than sixty years of love and music.
