Eric Goulden, chairman of the Astor Theatre Society, speaks to theatre supporters on Thursday. Karen Murphy, of the J&W Murphy Foundation, and Lynn Cochrane, vice-chair of the Astor board, look on. (Rick Conrad)

The board of the Astor Theatre on Thursday unveiled some details of a plan they hope will make the theatre the centre of arts and culture on the South Shore.

“We are definitely the envy of a lot of other theatres in Nova Scotia,” Astor Theatre Society chairman Eric Goulden said.

“And it is a very, very valuable treasure.”

The historic Liverpool theatre, which opened in 1902, recently received a $500,000 donation from the J&W Murphy Foundation. The five-year funding commitment will help with the Astor’s operational expenses, and help improve its marketing, promotion and fundraising efforts.

Board members invited the community on Thursday afternoon to learn more about the foundation’s support.

The contribution will help the Astor work on long-term projects to make the theatre sustainable. Three consultants will be hired to come up with fundraising and communications plans and oversee the process.

Heather White Brittain, the director of development with the Imperial Theatre in Saint John, will lead the Astor’s fundraising and sponsorship development efforts. That will include creating a fund development database that will help the Astor secure more sustainable donations from corporations and other foundations.

Cathy Neumiller, a communications and marketing professional based in Halifax, will help create a new marketing and communications plan for the theatre. That will include a newly designed website, a subtle rebranding and more community outreach.

“We don’t have the capacity in house to do this work,” said Lynn Cochrane, vice-chair of the Astor board. 

“(The employees) do miracles every day with what they have to work with. But the fund development and marketing communications side are specialist areas and require specialists to do them.”

Cochrane said a lot of the work for the first year will be behind the scenes. But lovers of the Astor should start seeing some changes by the end of this year.

Neumiller says she hopes to harness the enthusiasm of the Astor’s sizable and dedicated group of volunteers.

“It’s really about relationships,” she said in an interview.

“The ultimate with communications is striking up a relationship with someone and finding out what they’re passionate about. The goal is to find the people that are the most passionate and get them on board to help achieve the things that need to be done because there’s a lot.”

Jean Robinson-Dexter, a former executive director of the Astor and longtime chair of the Liverpool International Theatre Festival, will act as a project manager.

The president of Horizons Community Development Associates also helped Cochrane create the funding proposal to the Murphy foundation.

“I guess I’ll be a bit of a trouble-shooter and a bit of a historian about the organization and the kinds of things that the theatre does,” Robinson-Dexter said in an interview.

“I’ll be doing regular check-ins with the two wonderful consultants and sharing that back to the board, making sure we’re on track in terms of deliverables and timelines. It’s a great opportunity to be back and contributing to the Astor again.”

The Astor announced the “life-changing” contribution from the J&W Murphy Foundation in April. 

The foundation was established in 2008 by the late Janet and Dr. William Murphy, longtime Liverpool residents. Dr. Murphy co-founded the thriving Mersey Seafoods in 1964. 

It contributes to a wide variety of charitable causes, especially in Queens County.

The foundation’s Karen Murphy told QCCR on Thursday that they had many discussions with the Astor board about how to help.

“And our conclusion was that we could assist in some funding to take away some of the operational worries so the focus could be on future-proofing the facility,” she said.

“It’s often capital projects that get a lot of attention. But we found with especially small- and medium-sized organizations, operational funding is often forgotten. And sometimes that’s the key to all the other creativity-building that needs to happen.”

She said that she and her family have been longtime supporters of the Astor and were happy to help “take it to the next level”.

“When people find out I’m from Liverpool, they invariably mention the Astor. That tells you what a legacy is already in place. And it’s on all of us to keep adding to that and to keep building it up. This place has to be here for the next 100 years like it has been already.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Morgan Sampson, echocardiogram technician, and Queens General Hospital Foundation trustees Kelly Whalen, Kerry Morash, Janice Reynolds and Al Doucet with the new echocardiogram at Queens General Hospital in Liverpool. (Queens General Hospital Foundation photo)

Queens County residents will be able to stay closer to home for vital testing, thanks to an investment by the Queens General Hospital Foundation.

The foundation recently invested almost $400,000 to install a new echocardiogram and cardiopulmonary exercise testing machine at Queens General in Liverpool.

Al Doucet, a retired physician who is chairman of the hospital foundation, said that means that cardiologists and internal medicine specialists can now see more people here.

“They’re significant because they bring to Liverpool testing that otherwise was not available anywhere else, people had to travel for this,” Doucet told QCCR.

“But also, people that are in hospital, that are hospital patients, this equipment, especially the echocardiogram, it’s movable so that it can go up to the floors where people are sick so they don’t even have to come out of their hospital rooms and we can also use it on people who are sick in the emergency department.”

Queens General already has stress-testing equipment that involves patients using a treadmill to measure the heart’s response to physical activity.

But the new equipment uses a stationary bike to measure the response of your lungs as well. Internal medicine specialist Dr. Jeff Ratushny, who is based in Bridgewater, has a special interest in pulmonary stress testing, Doucet said.

“So this is an upgrade on our stress-testing equipment to add the pulmonary component to it. And that was really because Dr. Rathushny has a special interest in that. For our health professionasl that we have here, we want to give them the equipment that they need and that they want to give them the ability to come here and stay.”

The echocardiogram cost $275,000, while the exercise testing equipment cost $93,000. Those were just two of the significant contributions to health care in Queens County made by the foundation in the past year.

It has donated more than $1 million for equipment, training and other things to help attract more health professionals to the area and to make health care more accessible locally. 

“Our mandate does not confine us to just the hospital. But everything that we look at it’s in the lens of how can we make this a better place to live for people, how can we make it the best place for care, how can we put the best equipment in that we can retain professionals that are coming to work here.”

The foundation is also contributing $725,000 toward the establishment of a new MRI machine at South Shore Regional Hospital in Bridgewater. 

And Doucet said they’re investing up to $3.5 million in a new CT scanner at Queens General. He said they’re working with Nova Scotia Health to recruit the technicians to staff that equipment properly.

The foundation relies on donations and investments to fund its work. Doucet said its volunteer board of trustees is concerned about financing projects big and small.

Whether that’s a new floor-cleaning machine, doing things to help staff morale or sprucing up the outside of the hospital with art and gardens, he said it’s all part of making Queens General a better place to work and visit.

“There’s very few hospitals that you’ll see flowers that are blooming at the front door. So we want to make the hospital not so clinical and not so sterile. We want it to be an inviting place so that it reduces the anxiety people have as they come in.”

Doucet said the foundation has helped recruit six physicians to the area in the past two years. And thanks to things like their online presence, they’re also attracting other professionals like nurses to the area.

But he said there’s more to do. That’s why they continue to recruit with the goal of having the Queens General ER return to being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“The way it used to be when I was practising and the way it is now, things have definitely changed and we have to adapt to it. So having the foundation makes it at least easier for us to do that.”

For more information on the Queens General Hospital Foundation, visit their website at qghfoundation.ca, or their medical recruitment site at doctors-wanted.ca.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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