Brownstein: Fundraiser Sheila Kussner has made empathy her superpower

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Sheila Kussner is at her desk, shuffling by scads of letters and Put up-its. She has calls to make, appointments to maintain. She insists that she’ll have time to get to all of them, even her day by day 4:45 a.m. name with an acquaintance coping with main well being points.

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That’s as a result of, as Kussner explains, her workday begins at midday and doesn’t finish till 7 a.m. And that’s no typo. As anybody who has ever encountered Kussner will attest, she is a dynamo sans pareil. She leaves most dizzy along with her vitality stage.

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Kussner turns 91 in August however stays as lively as ever in preserving the eagerness for her trigger burning as brightly as ever. That trigger is Hope & Cope/L’espoir, c’est la vie, the centre she based 41 years in the past which has supplied psycho-social assist providers and wellness applications to over 50,000 most cancers sufferers and their family members freed from cost. Although primarily based on the Jewish Normal Hospital, these applications, carried out by a staff of workers and volunteers of about 400, can be found to all, no matter race, faith and language.

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Oh yeah, Kussner is likely one of the volunteers. Although she has helped increase greater than $120 million primarily for Hope & Cope but additionally for McGill’s oncology division, she has by no means taken a wage through the years. To the chagrin of her accountant, she has by no means taken a receipt for a tax write-off both.

The trigger can be extremely private for Kussner. She misplaced a leg to bone most cancers when she was 14, and in opposition to overwhelming odds of restoration — lower than 5 per cent then — she was decided to make a distinction within the lives of not solely these with most cancers, however these affected by any illness, as a result of she knew what a tough, lonely street that may very well be to navigate.

And this was all years earlier than Hope & Cope. About 4 years after Kussner misplaced her leg, a Montreal psychiatrist, whom she didn’t know, known as to ask her if she may discuss to an amputee her age that he wasn’t capable of get by to. Kussner was capable of get by to her. And the trigger was born.

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Kussner’s reward is empathy — however not sympathy, as she is fast to level out.

No shock then {that a} new guide about her life, by Douglas Hunter, is titled Repairing the World: Sheila Kussner and the Energy of Empathy.

“I’m astounded, shocked that somebody wrote a guide about my life,” Kussner says in her City of Mount Royal dwelling/workplace. “I’m not distinctive doing what I’m doing. However doing what I’m doing is greater than rewarding sufficient. There may be such a necessity for our wellness centre, particularly because the pandemic.”

Kussner has one other extraordinary reward: she will be able to mount a attraction offensive which no potential donor to her trigger can resist. She takes these would-be donors to lavish lunches at Milos or the Ritz-Carlton Lodge, on her personal dime, and sometimes brings an additional reward enticement. Et voila!

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“Sadly, I don’t transfer round in addition to I used to,” Kussner says. “My good leg is now giving me hassle, so I’m just about reliant on my wheelchair to get round nowadays.”

Kussner isn’t complaining, aside from the actual fact her lack of mobility has prevented from going about one other of her passions, baking.

“I used to take such satisfaction in making the perfect cookies and brownies and truffles,” she says. “My chiffon and occasional truffles had been second to none. I’ve to apologize that the cookies I’ve immediately had been store-bought.”

No apologies crucial. She received’t let Gazette photographer John Mahoney depart her dwelling till he takes some cookies with him.

Kussner can cajole anybody, be it in taking cookies or making donations.

As a pal of hers as soon as identified: Wives of the lads Kussner has taken to lunch shouldn’t have any worries about her intentions — “however the accountants of those males ought to fear.”

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Kussner praises her late husband Marvyn to whom she was married for nearly 60 years in offering her with all of the emotional and monetary assist to permit her to commit her life to her trigger. Though he died in 2013, she nonetheless burns a mourning candle at dwelling for him.

“Marvyn was so particular. Let me be emotional now.  Being an amputee, quite a lot of males received’t marry you. Marvyn completely didn’t care. His love for me was unconditional.”

Amongst Kussner’s best admirers is Sal Guerrera, internationally famend retail-store designer and a Hope & Cope board member for many years. He first met Kussner when his spouse Diane realized she had breast most cancers.

“At first I believed Sheila was a physician. She has this reward in selecting up a lot granular knowledge in well being care and, in consequence, has been capable of encourage sufferers in a extra constructive surroundings,” says Guerrera, whose spouse has been cancer-free for 26 years. “She pollinated knowledge from medication and sufferers going by most cancers. And by doing that, she may increase cash to assist the long run with regard to psycho-social, state-of-mind wants whereas going by a continual illness like most cancers. The surroundings performs such a job in the way you do brief and long run.”

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Hope & Cope govt director Suzanne O’Brien, initially a social employee from Australia, has labored with Kussner 26 years.

“What Sheila has carried out for most cancers care in Canada has been revolutionary,” the bubbly O’Brien marvels. “Due to that, sufferers themselves and their caregivers have been capable of assist in a manner that conventional medication typically can’t.”

Provides Guerrera: “What Sheila actually does is constructive revenge.”

“I’m undecided about that, however I do know that I really like what I’m doing,” says Kussner, who has been named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and to the orders of Quebec and Montreal.

Kussner credit her mom for turning her life round. When Kussner was 18, she was devastated after a date had dumped her upon studying she was an amputee. Her mom informed her there have been however two methods to manage.

“She informed me I may very well be bitter or higher,” Kussner recollects. “So I selected the trail much less travelled, making an attempt to be higher.”

Her mother can be proud.

Repairing the World: Sheila Kussner and the Energy of Empathy (Barlow Books; $32) by Douglas Hunter is offered Monday at bookstores and Amazon.

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