SOUTH SURREY — The legacy of a South Surrey resident and emergency physician who passed away earlier this year will continue on, thanks to a generous donation.
Steve and Karen McDonald, friends of Dr. Gilbert Dyck, have given the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation a monetary gift that will be used to purchase a chest compression system and a crash-cart defibrillator for the emergency department.
"With this equipment, if we have someone who has some sort of severe condition, we can intervene and perhaps save their life," said Jeff Norris, the foundation's CEO.
Norris added while he didn't know Dyck personally, the people that worked with him during the 1970s describe it as an "interesting time."
"Emergency medicine was just emerging. It was a time when you'd come into the hospital and they would call your general practitioner and your general practitioner
would come and take care of you," he said. "It wouldn't be a doctor who spent 100 per cent of their time working in the emergency room.
"He was at the centre of really setting the ground work for the kind of emergency care you see not only at Royal Columbian Hospital, but across the province."
To mark his memory and the donation, a plaque will be hung in the ER of the New Westminster hospital. One of the busiest in B.C, the department has close to 68,000 visits a year.
"On behalf of my family, I would like to thank Steve and Karen so much for honouring Gil," said widow Marion Dyck. "It is wonderful that the hospital that meant so much to him is being supported in this way."
Dyck retired in 2010 and passed away March 12, 2014 after a battle with multiple myeloma.