They looked like giant Christmas Stockings.

In fact, they were baggy green “surgical stockings” worn by patients during surgery. Along with other volunteers, Ann Mackay sewed the surgical stockings – and other linens – so the new Queensway General Hospital operating room would have a full supply when it opened.

“This hospital was built on a potato field,” she says. “We started from scratch.”

Besides provisioning the operating room, the volunteers made gifts to be sold in the hospital gift shop. They also bought a bus.

“It was the first thing we bought. It picked up patients and staff at Kipling Avenue and drove them over to the hospital. There was no subway then and Kipling was the end of the line.”

Volunteers also conducted vision screening in public schools for the ophthalmology department and ran a blood pressure clinic at the Canadian National Exhibition every summer.

Ann Mackay, whose husband Dr. James Mackay was the first chief of psychiatry at the hospital, served the auxiliary as president from 1983 to 1985. To this day she meets other past presidents for an annual luncheon.