The St. Paul's Foundation in Vancouver, British Columbia, has announced a C$75 million ($56 million) gift from the Jim Pattison Foundation.

The gift — the largest donation in Canadian history from a private citizen to a single medical facility — will support construction of a new St. Paul's Hospital at the Jim Pattison Medical Centre, an eighteen-acre health campus and research complex planned for downtown Vancouver. In addition to the hospital, the center will include acute-and-critical-care programs associated with St. Paul's; the provincial Heart Centre, Centre for Heart Lung Innovation, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, and other centers of excellence in health care and research; primary care and specialized outpatient clinics; and the PHC Research Institute.

When completed, the center will lead the way for the rest of the province by offering an integrated care model that blends hospital-based services with primary care and community health services. Research and teaching also will be integrated across the campus, enabling world-class clinicians and researchers to work in close proximity and deliver medical breakthroughs more quickly to patients.

"On behalf of the Jim Pattison Foundation, I am proud to donate to St. Paul's Foundation for a hospital that has been putting people first in our community for more than a hundred and twenty years," said Pattison, chair and CEO of the Jim Pattison Group. "The new Jim Pattison Medical Centre will build on St. Paul's Hospital's history of serving British Columbians with excellence and compassion and enable close collaboration among clinicians and researchers to collectively drive new standards in health care and treatment for all British Columbians."