Irene and Leslie Dubé pledge $1 million to Foundation

Friends of the hospital and well-known community philanthropists Irene and Leslie Dubé provided a matching gift of $1 million to support Making the O.R. a Priority as well as nine bedside monitors and a two central monitors for the Emergency Department. 

The gift is one of many the couple has made to Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation, including a donation that led to the creation of the Irene and Leslie Dubé Centre of Care, the Breast Health Centre in 2006. The Dubés later made major gifts to expand the centre and, more recently, a matching gift to fund an upgrade of the hospital’s digital radiography suite.

Les Dubé says there was one aspect of the $3.7 million Making the O.R. a Priority campaign they were especially pleased to support. The project will see a major upgrade to the hospital’s cystoscopy suite. The suite is used for treating urological issues such as extreme kidney stones as well as bladder and prostate cancers. 

“We wanted to support that part because it matches with support that we’ve given to urology medicine in other hospitals,” Les says. In 2017, St. Paul’s Hospital opened a new centre of excellence, thanks to the Dubés support and named it the Leslie and Irene Dubé Urology Centre of Health.

With a strong belief in philanthropy and the community, the Dubé name is prevalent in Saskatoon. A short drive down College Drive will take you past the Dubé Centre for Mental Health, the Leslie and Irene Dubé Health Sciences Library, and St. Thomas More College, home to the Les and Irene Dubé Community Service-Learning Program. These are just a few of the similarly named facilities in the city.

Les says their reason for giving is faith-based. “We believe we’ve been well rewarded in our lives and it’s because of our faith. This is why we believe in supporting the community any way that we can. We believe we have a responsibility wherever we see a need to do something to help others.”

For their kind, enduring and unfaltering support of the community and the hospital, the Foundation sincerely thanks Irene and Les Dubé.