Project Hope creator Jane Watson, second from right, and her extended family prepare their annual Christmas Eve delivery for St. Joseph's Health Centre, on Dec. 22, 2019.For the 16th year in a row, Jane Watson and her family will spend Christmas Eve morning hand-delivering gifts to as many patients as they can at Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Health Centre.
Ms. Watson brought Project Hope to St. Joseph’s as a way to pay forward the kindness that the hospital’s staff showed her and her husband, Ian Watson, on the night their son, William Thomas, died suddenly when he was only six weeks old. “We even ran into the heart surgeon,” she said. “They were thrilled. [Thomas] was gaining weight, he was growing, he looked healthy.”
“We asked if we could see him," Ms. Watson said."We went in and the nurses and the doctors, they were right there with us. Oh my gosh, the compassion was incredible. One nurse, I remember, just cried right along with us and never left our side.” This year’s presents will be stuffed pandas, 450 of them, each one adorned with a ribbon and a tag that reads: 'Project Hope.'But as time passed, the family sought a way to honour the memory of their son, while also showing their gratitude to the staff at St. Joseph’s hospital and spreading cheer to others.
Alla Agisheva, a nurse in the hospital’s inpatient mental-health unit, was on shift when the Watson family came to deliver their gifts two years ago.