Harold Shipp likes to joke that 11 Shipps have set sail from Trillium Health Centre and its predecessors.

In 1958, Harold and June Shipp’s third child, Gordon, was born at the Queensway General Hospital, just two years after it opened. Since that time, 10 grandchildren have been born at one of the hospitals.

In fact, he says, a Shipp has been an active part of the hospital since 1966 when his wife, June C. Shipp, became an active Queensway volunteer, a role she continued for 35 years until her sudden death in 2000.

Harold Shipp joined the Queensway Board of Directors in 1971. Uniquely, in 1974 he was invited to join the South Peel Hospital Foundation and so served both hospitals for decades. He remains Honourary Chair of the Trillium Health Centre Foundation Board.

Daughter Catharine Shipp Wells took up the family tradition when she became Chair of the Trillium Health Centre Board of Directors, serving until 2007.

The depth of the Shipp family commitment is easily explained, Harold Shipp says, by two premises. “You do it because it will be there for you when you need it. And you must always say ‘come on and give’ to others, not ‘go on and give’.

That philosophy was spectacularly demonstrated when, in 2005/2006 he issued a $6 million challenge to the community that pushed Trillium’s Capital Campaign over the top to $36 million.