Nurses at the Victoria Hospital thank Paper Excellence for their gift of $25,000. (Facebook/Victoria Hospital Foundation)

By Glenn Hicks

supporting local health care

Paper Excellence donates to P.A. Hospital

Apr 3, 2019 | 5:38 PM

The Paper Excellence Canada pulp mill in Prince Albert may be shuttered but that hasn’t stopped the owners from approving a major donation to the Victoria Hospital Foundation.

The company announced they’ll gift $25,000 to the NICU campaign for a new neonatal unit in Prince Albert, thanks to local employees across the region who promoted the cause to corporate head office.

“We want to be, and we have been a major player in the community in the past,” P.A. site manager Kelvin Winge told paNOW. “I live here and I grew up here so I understand the significance of that neonatal unit for northern Saskatchewan; we need that, and Paper Excellence is making a commitment to the community and they see a value here.”

The company said the donation was made because employees felt passionate about the campaign and the money will be used to purchase resuscitation equipment in the new space once it’s built.

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The company has about 185 full-time employees at its Meadow Lake Mechanical Pulp operation and many of those were instrumental in promoting the new neonatal cause to head office.

“We put an annual budget for corporate donations and we get requests from various parties throughout the year for support and our mini sub-committee fields those requests,” site general manager in Meadow Lake Simon Imray said. He explained they had many requests to support the Victoria Hospital Foundation so they asked head office to get involved.

The donation is toward provincial health care on behalf of the Meadow Lake, Prince Albert and corporate entities, according to Director of Corporate Communications Kathy Cloutier.

“We’re certainly committed to the facility in Prince Albert right now as it stands, to Meadow Lake and employees, and to the province of Saskatchewan that we have a strong foothold in, hence a desire to support such an organization as the Victoria Hospital Foundation,” she said.

Asked if the donation to the hospital was a signal of Paper Excellence’s long term commitment to the city of Prince Albert, Winge said the engineering feasibility study to determine if there was a sound business future was still underway.

“We’re studying to see if we can open this place up; it’s something that we do want to achieve,” he said. “If it happens it happens, that would be great if it doesn’t that [would be unfortunate], but if it happens it would be excellent for the community.”

The mill has a non-compete clause with the previous owners that expires in the spring of 2021.

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glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter@princealbertnow