Almost three years ago, Bill Stodolny made “one of the best decisions I've ever made” and became a volunteer at Brampton Civic Hospital where he’s been known to go to great lengths to brighten a patient’s day in the outpatient physiotherapy clinic, where he works one day a week.

“I asked one patient the first thing she wanted to do when she finished her procedures. She looked at me and said, ‘I want to dance’,” says Bill. “On her last day of treatment—we call it graduation day—I turned up the music and as she was about to leave I said, ‘No, no you're not going anywhere’ and we danced around.”

Bill loves his volunteer work—so much so that when Osler needed a volunteer contingent to help during the pandemic, he stepped forward without hesitation, and has been serving any way he can. You can find him at Brampton Civic more days than not.

“I realized that they would need help and I like helping people,” he says. “So, I said, ‘What the heck?’ I'm by myself at home—my wife passed away—so I said, yeah, definitely. Sign me up.”

Bill says things have settled down over the past few weeks but that navigating the rapidly changing course in the pandemic’s early days was difficult. “The biggest challenge was trying to get people to understand why we were doing what we were doing, and trying to comfort people who really wanted to go in and see loved ones but couldn't,” he says.

Bill was recently asked to join the Osler Volunteer Association Board and was also nominated for Brampton Civic’s Volunteer of the Year award. He’s humble about his service, but admits that his greatest reward is the feeling that he’s contributing to the incredible work of the Osler team.

“What I do, heck, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what everybody else is doing. Knowing that I can be just a little bit of help is what keeps me going,” he says. “When I come home, my legs are sore, but I sit down and I think, ‘Well, am I ever glad I went in today’.”

Now more than ever, your hospital needs your help. Vital life-saving equipment is needed to ensure that our hospitals can keep up with demand.