Who Are We?
Healthcare services supported by our community.
Through our relationships with community partners, sponsors, volunteers and individuals like you, we are dedicated to ensuring our North Okanagan facilities have access to the highest-quality equipment and resources to provide enhanced care in our region. As a registered BC charity, we work closely with Interior Health and our North Okanagan Administrations teams to help advance healthcare services in our communities. Together we support the purchase of urgently needed equipment and patient care initiatives to help bring excellence in healthcare and improve lives where we live.
See our priorities
Our North Okanagan region is vast and includes a lot of communities. We support Armstrong, Coldstream, Enderby, Falkland, Lumby, Spallumcheen and Vernon and areas in between. Additionally, the specialized Lions Vision Centre in Armstrong cares for patients from Lake Country to the Shuswap.
Originally, our Foundation was started solely to support the Vernon Jubilee Hospital. When Interior Health was established in 2001 and the healthcare systems were reorganized, we expanded our mandate to include long-term care and community health facilities in the North Okanagan as well.
The facilities we support in the North Okanagan include
Long-Term Care Facilities
Community Care Programs
Lions Vision Centre
Mental Health
Vernon Community Health & Public Health Programs throughout the North Okanagan.
…and the Vernon Jubilee Hospital
How Our Registered Charity Started in Vernon, BC
A history of changing healthcare in the North Okanagan.
In 1895, after a diphtheria epidemic struck Vernon, it became apparent that there was a dire need for a local hospital. A committee led by Mrs. Cameron, the wife of Vernon’s Mayor at the time, began to canvas the City of Vernon and the surrounding district. Thanks to Mrs. Clara Cameron’s tireless fundraising effort, the hospital opened its doors to patients in late 1897. In honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, it was named Vernon Jubilee Hospital. It offered sixteen beds and the rates were set at $1.50 per day for a public ward and $2.00 per day for a private room. There was no indoor plumbing and it quickly became known as the Cottage Hospital. Since then, VJH has provided exceptional healthcare to its patients.
VJH now serves our community as one of four service area hospitals operating in Interior Health’s network. Currently, Vernon Jubilee Hospital has 196 acute care beds along with 748 long-term and short-stay beds and 105 beds in assisted living facilities in Armstrong, Enderby, Lumby and the Greater Vernon area. Thanks to your continued generosity these healthcare facilities offer medical and surgical specialties, healthcare programs and a wide variety of seniors’ care programs that support our North Okanagan residents. These programs work in tandem with our dedicated medical teams to ensure complete and continuing healthcare beyond the hospital stay.
Since our founding in 1981, VJH Foundation has grown to meet the ever changing healthcare demands of our region. When Interior Health was established over 20 years ago and introduced a reorganization of healthcare in the North Okanagan, the VJH Foundation expanded its mandate to include residents to support the wellbeing of residents in long-term care and community health programs throughout our region. Today, with over 44,000 emergency room treatments, nearly 13,000 surgeries and more than 11,000 people being admitted to beds each year in the North Okanagan, you are continuously making a difference in the lives of our community and introducing new opportunities for world-class care in all of our healthcare facilities.
