$1 billion “Built for Us” hospital fundraising campaign unites behind leading philanthropic donors Peter Gilgan, Kris and Neelam Shah
Caroline Riseboro was 16 when she arrived at Trillium Health Partners frightened and in severe pain.
Doctors discovered an ovarian cyst so large it had consumed one ovary and threatened her ability to one day have children.
What followed were years of treatment and six-month checkups, and a lasting lesson in what it means to have exceptional care close to home.
“Because I was fortunate enough to have access to that level of quality health care,” she has said, “I understand both the importance of access to health care and the power of how donations can save lives.”
Today, the girl who was once a patient leads the foundation of the very hospital that cared for her.
And on October 5, she stood before her community to ask it for something extraordinary.
Trillium Health Partners Foundation has launched Built for Us, a $1 billion campaign and the most ambitious in its history, to help complete one of the great health care transformations of our time.
It is not a single gift but an invitation, extended to an entire region, to finish what a handful of visionary families began.
The campaign will support The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital, destined to become Canada’s largest; the Shah Family Hospital for Women and Children, Ontario’s first hospital devoted entirely to the health of women and children; and the redevelopment of The Gilgan Family Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke, which will more than double its beds.
“Built for Us is more than bricks and mortar,” Riseboro said.
“It is a promise that when your child is sick, when your parent needs care or when your family faces an unexpected health challenge, exceptional care will be there when you need it and closer to home.”
That promise was first made real by philanthropist Peter Gilgan, a recent Lifestyles Magazine/Meaningful Influence cover subject.
In 1978, he founded a homebuilding company and named it Mattamy, for two of his eight children, Matt and Amy.
Over the decades that followed, he built it into North America’s largest privately held homebuilder, beginning in the very region Trillium now serves. In 2022, he turned that lifetime of building toward something more enduring, giving $105 million through the Peter Gilgan Foundation to create a new Mississauga Hospital and transform the Queensway Health Center.
At the time, it was the largest hospital gift in Canadian history.
For Gilgan, it was a homecoming. “Because I started my business in this region many years ago,” he said, “this gift is a way of giving back to the community and to recognize our amazing health care workers for their commitment.”
It was also a continuation of a remarkable life of giving. Since 2006, his foundation has committed more than $420 million to Canadian health care, his name now rising over patient towers at SickKids and St. Michael’s, a center for women’s cancers at Women’s College Hospital, and new research into early cancer detection at Princess Margaret.
Long before his landmark Trillium gift, he had quietly supported the neonatal intensive care unit at Mississauga Hospital, caring for the region’s tiniest patients. When the final beam was raised at Queensway this January, signed by more than 1,200 patients, families, staff, and neighbors, Gilgan spoke of more than steel.
The new center, he said, “reflects a shared commitment to reimagining what’s possible and delivering real, lasting benefits for this community.”
The second cornerstone was laid by a family whose story is, in many ways, the story of Mississauga itself.
Kris Shah arrived from India in 1974, a young man facing a new country and a new language.
He earned an engineering degree at the University of Waterloo, co-founded Baylis Medical Company, and helped grow it from a start-up run out of a home into a global medical device maker with more than 1,000 employees.
He and his wife, Neelam, raised their family in Peel Region, where they built their business, and in 2022 they created the Shah Family Foundation to widen access to health care and education.
In May 2024, just before Mother’s Day, the Shahs made the gift that will carry their name into the future: the Shah Family Hospital for Women and Children, celebrated as the largest South Asian philanthropic gift to date in Ontario.
Kris Shah spoke of gratitude rather than achievement, describing a community “which has embraced us as first-generation immigrants from India.” Neelam Shah spoke from the heart.
“Supporting women and children means investing in the heart of our future,” she said. “We wanted to contribute in a way that ensures every mother and every child can access specialized, compassionate care when they need it most.”
Few hospitals anywhere welcome as many new lives. More than 8,000 babies are born at Trillium each year, more than at any other hospital in Canada.
The Shah Family Hospital will offer families 31 birthing suites, one of Ontario’s largest neonatal intensive care units with suites where parents and newborns can stay together, and Mississauga’s first dedicated inpatient mental health beds for children and youth.
It is, in the truest sense, a hospital built around the moments that define a family.
Built for Us now asks the wider community to stand alongside these families.
Their generosity joins historic commitments from the Province of Ontario and the City of Mississauga, whose council voted unanimously last year to contribute $390 million.
Together, they are bringing to life a hospital of breathtaking scale: 2.8 million square feet, a 22-story patient tower, more than 950 beds, and what will be Ontario’s largest 24/7 emergency department, along with some 2,400 additional health care workers and about 400 more doctors for the community.
The Gilgan Family Queensway Health Center, now standing at full height, is set to welcome its first patients in 2029 as a dedicated home for rehabilitation and complex continuing care.
For Karli Farrow, president and CEO of Trillium Health Partners, the buildings are only the beginning.
A former senior health policy adviser to the Ontario government who joined Trillium in 2009, she has long championed a simple idea: that care itself must be redesigned around people.
“Built for Us reflects something deeply Canadian,” she said, “the belief that we are stronger when we look after one another.”
Riseboro, who has raised more than $3 billion over a 25-year career and previously led Plan International Canada, has watched that belief take hold. Last year, the foundation enjoyed the most successful year in its history, raising $87 million through more than 127,000 gifts.
Among them was a $6.6 million legacy gift from an anonymous former patient and lifelong Mississauga resident, and the Sarita and Suresh Madan AI Acceleration Fund, which is helping clinicians harness artificial intelligence to shorten wait times and improve care. From the Hazel McCallion Walk for Health to the Trillium Diwali Gala, celebrated as Canada’s largest, the generosity runs wide and deep.
Fittingly, the campaign’s ambassadors are two of the community’s most beloved figures. Bianca Andreescu, born in Mississauga, made history in 2019 as the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam singles title, defeating Serena Williams at the U.S. Open.
Nav Bhatia, the Toronto Raptors Superfan and proud Malton resident, came to Canada in 1984 as an engineer who could not find work in his field, became a record-breaking car salesman, built a thriving dealership business, and in 2021 became the first fan ever inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Both appear, alongside Trillium’s own nurses and staff, in a limited-edition clothing collection designed by local artists to celebrate the neighborhoods of Mississauga and Etobicoke, with a portion of proceeds supporting the campaign through December 31.
Trillium already cares for more than 2.2 million people in one of the most diverse places in the country, where more than half of residents were born elsewhere, and more than 130 languages are spoken.
By 2041, that community is expected to reach 3.2 million. Built for Us is its answer and its invitation to everyone who calls this place home.
As Kris Shah put it, “Stronger, healthier communities are built through collective effort. We invite others to join us in shaping a better future for all families.”