Couple’s jaundiced start, 70-year bond with Victoria Hospital behind $536K memorial donation

When a young engineering student named Will Tishinski was admitted to Victoria Hospital in February 1956 with jaundice, he thought it was the darkest moment of his life.

His final exams were weeks away, he was about to graduate and had a job lined up, but now those prospects were threatened as he was to be laid up in hospital for at least three weeks.

But what he could not have imagined was that, while there, he would meet the woman who would define the next 70 years of his life.

“There was this incredibly pretty student nurse,” he said of his future wife, Mavis Tishinski. “She was just a wonderful person in her heart, so much compassion.”

She was doing her first year at Victoria General Hospital School of Nursing.

Tishinski knew “quite early” that she was the one.

After being discharged from the hospital, Tishinski would go onto pass his exams, marry Mavis and go on to be a Manitoba Hydro vice-president.

While married, Mavis fulfilled a childhood dream that began in Gainsborough, Sask. where, as a little girl, she watched her grandmother — with whom she lived — help deliver babies as a community midwife. Seeing the joy that followed each birth sparked that ambition.

After graduating nursing school, she began her career in the operating room at the “Vic.” She went on to enjoy a 30‑year nursing career, mostly working in surgery and the emergency department, and became one of the first nurses at the hospital to be trained in laparoscopic surgery.

Her commitment to health care led to the couple’s philanthropic work with the hospital years later.

On Friday, the Victoria Hospital Foundation announced a gift of more than $531,000 from Tishinski in memory of his wife, who died in April at the age of 88.

The money funded upgrades to one of the operating rooms, now named the Mavis Tishinski Surgical Suite. Equipment was mounted to reduce floor clutter and organize cables. New surgical lights improve visibility, and monitors were positioned to support ergonomic working conditions.

Tishinski helped hospital staff unveil two plaques Friday to honour Mavis’s memory.

The first can be found in the front entrance of the hospital, and the second will be placed outside the operating room bearing her name.

Over the last several years, the Tishinskis donated money towards an outdoor space on the hospital grounds known as the Will & Mavis Tishinski Tranquility Trail to support mental health and well-being.

They also contributed to the hospital’s Miracle Garden and a recently opened sensory lounge for patients living with dementia.

“I cannot overstate the impact Will and Mavis Tishinski have had on patient care,” said Jessica Miller, chief executive officer of the Victoria Hospital Foundation.

Mavis is remembered by her colleagues as being dedicated to her vocation. She would routinely drop everything and race in when the operating room was short-staffed.

As she got older, she didn’t like driving at night, so her husband would get her to work.

“We would go firing down Pembina Highway at 80 clicks when the speed limit is 60,” he said. “We raced to see how fast we could get to the hospital, from the phone call to the time she walked through the door.”

A patient, who approached Mavis decades after surgery, still remembered the way she held her hand and spoke gently as she went under anesthetic, a gesture that left a lifelong impression.

Standing in the hospital where he first met his wife, Friday, Tishinski said the highlight of his life was having her at his side.

“Those were the best 70 years of my life, second to none,” he said.

kelly.riess@freepress.mb.ca