A lifetime of giving

It’s August 20, 2021.

Bill Bachra, founder of the Bachra Family Golf Tournament, circles the course in his cart, observing the crowd at the inaugural event. He watches old friends reunite after months of pandemic restrictions and reflects on the moment’s significance.

That first tournament raised $225,000 for MSH Foundation. Since then, the Bachra family has given more than $1 million in personal donations, and the golf event is on track to raise another $1 million.

Bill’s desire to give stretches back to his childhood in northern England, where he watched his parents help fellow newcomers from Punjab, India. “When they built the local Sikh temple, I saw them going around fundraising, asking people for a pound or two,” says the longtime financial planner. “It became natural to help others, because I saw my parents do it all the time.”

His giving is also a testament to the Sikh practice of dasvandh, which encourages donating 10 per cent of one’s income. His wife, Manjit, kids, Amrithal and Simeran, daughter-in-law, Kristen Lewis, and son-in-law, Haydn Evans, have embraced the tradition wholeheartedly. The entire family pitches in on fundraising, with Amrithal and Kristen set to helm the golf tournament in the coming years.

And it’s a way to honour his parents, while returning the kindness his family experienced at MSH when his father passed away shortly after they immigrated to Canada. “We were new in the country and we didn’t know anybody here,” he recalls.

His mother was a frequent patient, too. During the 2003 blackout, Bill needed to swap her oxygen machine, which was quickly running low, for a portable tank that could run without electricity. “When I finally got through to the hospital, I was told they had back-up oxygen tanks that I could pick up. I only realized then that someone had donated these tanks, keeping my mother alive.”

Bill credits MSH’s support for extending his mother’s life more than a decade beyond her prognosis. “If she hadn’t received that help from the hospital, she wouldn’t have been able to spend time with her grandchildren.”

With Bill and his family raising money this year for new birthing beds and next year for the Gulshan & Pyarali G. Nanji Mental Health Services at MSH, the Bachras’ legacy of giving will continue well into the future.