Canmore Hospital Foundation Raises $1.9M To Expand Local Care

A local foundation has raised more than $1.9 million in the last year without a major capital campaign. And the money? It’s already changing what patients can access inside Canmore General Hospital.

From new equipment for women’s health and emergency care to training hospital staff and helping Bow Valley residents pursue careers in healthcare, more than half of the Canmore Hospital Foundation’s resources went directly toward healthcare or its long-term endowment fund.

According to the Foundation’s 2025-26 annual report, it brought in $1,925,511 in revenue. Of that, $782,656 was invested in hospital equipment, programs and initiatives, while another $230,000 was added to its endowment. Combined, those investments represented 52 percent of its resources.

It was one of the Foundation’s strongest non-capital campaign years, but for Executive Director Renée Krysko, the bigger story is what having that money available allows the hospital to do.

“We can be proactive and responsive,” Krysko told Bow Valley Insider.

In the past, she explained, the Foundation could receive a list of equipment or projects the hospital needed, agree to fund one and then have to raise the money before anything could be ordered.

Depending on the equipment, another six months to two years could pass before it arrived.

Now, having money available means the Foundation can sometimes respond almost immediately.

Krysko pointed to a piece of equipment recently requested by the emergency department that needed to be replaced sooner rather than later.

“They asked, we said within hours, ‘Yes, order it.’”

A Win for Women’s Health

One of the most significant investments in 2025-26, Krysko said, was in women’s health.

Approximately $336,000 worth of equipment was purchased, including hysteroscopes, laparoscopic towers, birthing beds, an Omni Scope and a specialty operating table. 

The Foundation says the equipment is expanding access to gynecological care in Canmore.

For patients, this means that they now have access to more minimally invasive procedures, potentially shorter recoveries and more care closer to home.

“What a lot of that equipment has allowed us to do is expand our gynecological procedures that we can do here,” Krysko said.

That includes procedures related to abnormal uterine bleeding, polyps and fibroids, as well as diagnosing endometriosis.

“The sooner you can get answers and treatment, the faster you can get back to living your everyday life.”

The Foundation has also funded equipment elsewhere in the hospital.

A portable X-ray machine, for example, allows imaging to be brought directly to patients who cannot safely be moved. Other purchases included cystoscopes for the hospital’s growing urology program, a C-MAC monitor and a Medfusion syringe pump.

Krysko told us that investment in urology began growing toward the end of the reporting year and is expected to increase the hospital’s ability to provide that care locally.

The Investment Isn’t Just In Equipment

Some of the money is going toward the people who may eventually work inside the hospital, too.

In 2025, the Foundation awarded 20 scholarships worth a combined $41,000 to Bow Valley residents pursuing careers in healthcare. Its Bow Valley Health Care Scholarship Program and Indigenous Health Professional Bursary have supported 42 locals since the programs began four years ago.

The scholarships aren’t limited to future doctors and nurses, or to recent high school graduates.

Krysko said eligible fields can range from medicine and nursing to healthcare aide training, physiotherapy, EMS and recreational therapy.

There’s no age limit and it’s not limited to just doctors and nurses. However, Krysko said applicants must be local residents, with eligibility stretching from Cochrane to the British Columbia border and including Îethka Stoney Nakoda Nation.

There is no requirement for recipients to return to work in the Bow Valley after completing their education, but Krysko hopes that supporting locals could eventually help increase the pool of healthcare professionals available to the region.

“The intention is really to increase the pool of staff that we could potentially have here one day in the future,” she shared.

The program has continued to grow. While 20 scholarships were awarded in 2025, Krysko said another 23 were awarded in 2026.

The Foundation is also investing in people already working at the hospital.

Its annual report says funding supported high-fidelity CPR simulation, specialized wound-care and labour and delivery training and other professional development opportunities.

According to Krysko, training can be particularly important at a rural hospital, where staff may encounter a wide range of complicated cases rather than repeatedly seeing the same type of complex emergency.

“We get a variety of different complex cases,” she explained.

In one example, Krysko said Foundation funding helped bring an advanced labour and risk management course to Canmore, with approximately 20 staff participating.

“Not only were they learning new skills, but they were actually learning the skills together as a team.”

More Patients, More Money, And More Planning

Those investments are happening at a hospital that sees thousands of patients each year.

During the reporting period, Canmore General Hospital recorded 16,937 emergency visits, 1,212 surgical visits and 246 births. It has 450 staff, 93 physicians and 48 acute and long-term care beds, according to the annual report.

At the same time, the Foundation itself has grown substantially.

Its annual revenue has climbed from approximately $500,000 five years ago to $1.925 million in 2025-26. Its endowment has now surpassed $2.8 million, more than halfway toward its goal of $5 million by 2034.

Krysko, who became executive director in December, credits much of that growth to residents continuing to support the hospital after major fundraising campaigns for projects including long-term care and the emergency department.

“As they walk through the door and they literally see the tangible change in the physicality of just the facility itself, but often will experience what that change in medical care is, there’s a sense of pride in being part of something sort of bigger than yourself,” she shared.

The Foundation is now looking at what comes next.

Krysko told us that work is underway on a new strategic plan intended to identify the hospital’s future needs and where the Foundation can make the biggest difference.

One project already being funded is an upgrade to the hospital’s diagnostic imaging area, which she said is intended to improve the space and, importantly, patient privacy.

The Foundation’s annual report says 29 per cent of its 2025-26 resources remain available for future hospital needs, giving it the ability to respond to urgent requests without first having to launch a new fundraising effort.

For Krysko, that flexibility may ultimately be one of the biggest changes that comes with the Foundation’s growth.

Instead of asking whether the community can raise enough money to meet an immediate hospital need, she said the Foundation can increasingly start with a different question: what does the hospital need next?