By Adam Donnelly

Kamloops family proud new owners of Cooper Family Foundation “Wings Above Kamloops” house

Jul 21, 2018 | 3:37 PM

KAMLOOPS — It was an exciting moment for many of the people gathered at 2676 Bentall Place on Saturday afternoon.

For some, the anticipation came from finding out who submitted the winning bid on the Cooper Family Foundation “Wings Above Kamloops” house. For others, they awaited the final fundraising numbers from the unique auction process, all of which will go to building the new expansion at the Marjorie Willoughby Snowden Hospice Home.

First came the fund-raising total:

“The foundation has exceeded its goal, and we have raised $1.3 million,” Foundation spokesperson Nelly Dever announced. “[That] includes the full sale value of the house, along with the Cooper family matching any donations made to the 2018 Wings Above Kamloops House.”

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The money raised has been earmarked to help build a new expansion at the Marjorie Willoughby Snowden Hospice Home, which will be used for a number of new programs, according to Kamloops Hospice Association Executive Director Wendy Marlowe.

“Our new building… is going to be a community services support building,” Marlowe explained .”We’ll do workshops, we’ll do more group therapy, we’ll have an alternate therapy room. [It will be] just a way to support our community, who want to support their loved ones at home.”

Marlowe says the fundraiser has allowed the Hospice Association to begin work on the expansion sooner than originally expected.

“It’s put a little fire under us,” she said. “We thought that we would be raising money for a couple of years to be able to put this project in place, so we’ve been working hard to get our new programs in place for when that new building opens.”

As for the winning bid, it was submitted by RJ and Ninder Toor, who say they were planning to build a new home in the near future, but felt the “Wings Above Kamloops” house was the right fit for them.

“The complete layout, the build, the location. When they built it, they just checked off all the boxes that were important to us,” RJ explained after the keys were handed over. “It just felt like home when we walked in.”

For the Toor family, knowing the money they spent on the home would be going to help an organization like the Hospice Association was a huge part of the decision to place their bid.

“We’re sort of the small part in this whole equation,” RJ told CFJC Today. “Tod and Monica Cooper spearheaded all this. Hats off to everybody – the tradespeople, the board – they did all the heavy lifting. We just got to be the recipient of a beautiful home they constructed.”