Donor Stories
Patients and Staff to Benefit from Webb Legacy of Caring
Jack and Dorothy Webb (“Dot” to her nearest and dearest) are long-time friends of Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation. Dot passed away in 2007, but Jack wanted to leave a legacy that reflected their shared interest in health care. “Dot and I always respected Saskatoon City Hospital, and had given to the Foundation. Both of us had been treated there over the years, and the care was great,” Jack says.
“Our daughter, Meridee is an RN who’s been involved in orthopedics for the past 30 years at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. When the Foundation suggested designating orthopedics as the beneficiary of our endowment, I knew it was the right decision.”
The Jack and Dorothy Webb Orthopedic Endowment will fund a visiting lecture series dealing with orthopedic surgery and treatment. It will give doctors, nurses, residents and students working with orthopedic patients a chance to learn from the knowledge and experience of leading practitioners.
Jack and Dot met in 1944. They were attending a dance at the “best dance hall in the world” in Clear Lake, Manitoba. Jack was home on leave from the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he served as a wireless air gunner. Dot was part of the war effort as well; she worked as a medical stenographer with the Armed Forces.
The young couple married and so began a 62-year love story. After the war, they moved to Regina and started a family while Jack launched his career in surveying. He articled under Saskatchewan’s Chief Surveyor, then received his own commission as a Saskatchewan Land Surveyor (SLS) in 1949. He worked for firms in Edmonton and Saskatoon before becoming a founding partner of Webb & Webster, which was headquartered in Saskatoon but carried out jobs across Western Canada. The firm continues today as Webb Surveys, with son Tom at the helm.
Life as a surveyor was adventurous, and Jack says he thoroughly enjoyed “being on the ground floor in the 50s, 60s and 70s when the west blossomed and required land surveyors”. He was in charge of part of the first right-of-way survey across the Rocky Mountains from Edmonton to Vancouver. “We were seven months on the road, and I was the only one to take my wife and kids,” Jack remembers.
But the Webb’s also faced challenges. In 1953, after the birth of their youngest child, Dot contracted polio. “She was determined to walk again, so she worked hard in rehab. By 1957 she was golfing – she was a heck of a golfer,” Jack says.
Dot was also an accomplished painter, a long-time member of Grosvenor Park United Church and president of the Lions Ladies Auxiliary. She and Jack raised three children: Rob is a doctor practicing in the U.S., Susan is in Vancouver, and Tom is in Saskatoon.
Through the Webb Orthopedic Endowment, and the lecture series it will support, Jack is leaving a legacy that will carry on the family name in Saskatoon, while benefitting future patients and staff.
Saskatoon City Hospital Foundation thanks Jack Webb for his support!
