Hurry hard: How a NICU nurse helped secure two donations from a curling legend’s foundation
Donor Story
As a social curler for 25 years, Sheri Douglas was quite familiar with the late Canadian curling legend Sandra Schmirler and the foundation that bears her name.
As a donor, she knew about the foundation’s history of supporting neonatal intensive care units across the country. And as a children’s and childbirth nurse and clinical nurse specialist at Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN), Sheri wondered: how can we get this foundation to support our NICU?
“I’m passionate about the NICU, passionate about childbirth, and passionate about curling — so it just made sense to connect those worlds,” Sheri says.
All I really did was ask our hospital foundation: ‘why aren’t we among the NICU programs benefiting from this?’ And they took it from there to get the grant application going.
Sheri’s passion for her NICU patients, her love of curling, and her commitment to advancing neonatal care in our community has been instrumental in securing not one, but two grants from the Sandra Schmirler Foundation since 2022, including a $34,000 donation this year.
The latest gift will fund a new CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) device for the NICU at WRHN @ Midtown (formerly Grand River Hospital).
The machine helps babies breathe by gently pushing air into their lungs through a mask over their mouth and nose. By keeping their airways open, CPAPs give premature or sick babies the support they need to grow stronger.
Meeting the need
Roughly 75 per cent of NICU patients require a CPAP machine at some point during their hospital stay, whether they need it for a few minutes or a few weeks. And with NICU admissions on the rise – WRHN has seen a 40 per cent increase over the last five years – the need for additional CPAPs is rising too.
"We are so thankful to the Sandra Schmirler Foundation for providing us with a new CPAP machine,” says Dr. Mallory Fox, pediatrician at WRHN.
Our population is growing quickly and we are seeing more babies than ever come through our NICU. Having access to enough CPAP machines is one of the things that helps us to provide a high level of NICU care in our community.
If NICU capacity is maxed out, babies that require longer-term respiratory support are sometimes transferred out of the region to access the care they need. WRHN has also previously had to borrow CPAPs from nearby hospitals to meet demand.
“Equipment would literally arrive by taxi,” Sheri says. “But because of donor support, we no longer have to rely on other hospitals for these essential tools."
And that’s what drives me — ensuring babies get the care they need, in their own community.
That’s what drives the Sandra Schmirler Foundation, too.
‘Champions start small’
Celebrating its 25th year in 2026, the Orleans, Ont.-based charity has raised more than $10 million for NICUs nationwide. The foundation is named after Sandra Schmirler, an Olympic and world champion curler who died in 2000 at the age of 36.
During a cheque presentation to WRHN Foundation, the Sandra Schmirler Foundation said they are “proud to continue Sandra’s legacy by helping provide life-saving equipment … giving every baby the chance to grow up and become a champion, just like Sandra.”
The Sandra Schmirler Foundation’s first gift to WRHN was a $50,000 donation in 2022 that funded two vital monitoring systems.
For Sheri, both gifts have been especially meaningful.
“The motto for the Sandra Schmirler Foundation is ‘Champions start small’ – and that’s exactly what the NICU is about,” she says.
This work is very close to my heart, from every side of it.
Be part of a generational opportunity to strengthen our health network.
Support new ways to connect the nearly 1.5 million people across WRHN’s catchment area to the care they deserve.