Compassionate Elderly Home Care Company Marks 10 Years Of Service
VICTORIA – Transforming lives.
That’s what Serenity Homecare Ltd. has been doing for the past 10 years, since Murray and Kathy Tough started the company to provide compassionate elderly home care.
Serenity Homecare Ltd. owners Murray and Kathy Tough
Their reasons for starting the company were very personal. They’re fueled by the belief that every life should be celebrated, and that “the elderly have contributed their greatness and have earned the right to their dignity.”
There were two defining moments that nudged the Toughs towards starting their own venture.
First, a friend of Murray’s had a sister who was dying with cancer, and he quit work and went to live with her for the last three months of her life.
“My friend says if they had not done that, they wouldn’t have been able to die with dignity,” he recalls.
Then there was their own family situation.
“My father-in-law had come down with Alzheimer’s disease several years ago, and it nearly killed my mother-in-law,” he notes. “He went from being this kind, pillar-of-the-community man, to being an angry stranger that she had to look after.
“Kathy and I were in Alberta, her parents were living in Newfoundland. Her mother needed somebody to come in and give her a break, and for whatever reason she couldn’t access that. So we knew there was a need for this type of business,” he says. “A disease like that is so stressful for family members, and probably more for them than the person with the disease. It’s the family that really, really suffers. It’s such a horrible disease, and it kind of made us go, ‘we’re needed. Let’s do something about this’.”
Serenity Home Care provides care and support for the elderly
So they did. It was 2010, and the Toughs were in Calgary, Alberta with Murray, an engineer and project manager running his own company, while Kathy had a business providing home staging and senior move management – helping seniors downsize and move.
A friend connected them with someone in the elderly home care business, who in turn put them in touch with an organization to help businesses like Serenity get started.
“We’re avid sailors and had been coming out to Victoria for awhile, so we thought this was our chance,” he recalls. “We decided to make a lifestyle choice that so many people make, and said Victoria was the place we wanted to live.”
The Toughs and their 35 employees are inspired because they get to do “out of the ordinary” things for their clients.
“We really pride ourselves on being the company that tries to say ‘yes’,” he says. “One of the best examples was when a woman called who had a loved one with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She asked ‘Do you have someone who can take them fishing’. We found someone who said they’d love to. They took him fishing, and they had a wonderful relationship for many years.
“We just love to do those special things where we get to take someone on an adventure or an experience, something they’ve loved to do but stopped doing,” he adds. “We have some of our employees taking people out golfing, regularly. They’ve taken people sailing, canoeing, dragon boating, skating. . .we’ve taken people to opera.”
One particular touching story was of a client who had severe mobility issues and couldn’t do much with his hands and couldn’t walk. A Serenity employee found out that they loved model airplanes, so she brought in model airplanes that the two of them could do together.
“One of the nurses took her aside and said ‘You have absolutely transformed their life. You have no idea’,” he says. “We make such a difference, and we’re here to transform the lives of our clients, their families, and our employees.
“We put people ahead of profits in everything we do – in the way we treat our clients, and the way we treat our employees.”
