Murray Sinclair Memorial Fund

Artists In Healthcare Manitoba Funds Indigenous Music Program

By: Kevin Rollason

Photo supplied by: Sinclair family

Murray Sinclair was many things in life: a trailblazing judge, chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, senator, husband, father, and grandfather. But Sinclair also loved music, especially live music, and in the last weeks of his life, a musician with a guitar would regularly come into his hospital room to play songs to calm him as he edged closer to being welcomed by his ancestors at the lodge in the West.

Sinclair was 73 when he passed away on Nov. 4, 2024, and, to honour his memory and legacy, his family created the Murray Sinclair Family Fund at the Winnipeg Foundation. The fund received gifts from both Sinclair’s family and people across the country and around the world.

Sinclair’s family is now hoping the same program which brought him so much comfort in his final days will be received by more Indigenous people during their stays in Winnipeg hospitals. During each of the next four years, $10,000 will go from the Murray Sinclair Memorial Fund to Artists in Healthcare Manitoba to support its Indigenous Health Music Program. It means the program will be able to provide another 250 hours of live music annually.

Sinclair’s daughter, Dené, said the music program is “really amazing.”

She said her dad benefited from a program which, during what can be a vulnerable and worrying time, sees musicians come into hospital to play music for Indigenous patients.

Sinclair spent his final four months in hospital and during that time the music program’s Quinton Don Poitras brought both comfort and his guitar into his room. Their shared love of music blossomed into a friendship and Poitras continued to play for Sinclair, even when he entered intensive care.

“It was really beautiful to see how this connection between music lovers could bring so much comfort, at a time when it was most needed,” Dené said.

Shirley Grierson, executive director of Artists in Healthcare Manitoba, said the overall music program was established around 2004, but the program specifically for Indigenous patients being treated at St. Boniface and the Health Sciences Centre, began in 2024, after receiving a $25,000 founding gift from Winnipeg Foundation.

“I was looking at healthcare and community and saying ‘wait a minute, why aren’t we addressing something specific for the Indigenous community when they are in hospital?’” Grierson said. “A lot of people are coming from rural Manitoba and maybe they don’t have as many friends and family visiting.”
Grierson said the Artists in Healthcare Manitoba program has always played for all patients, including ones from the Indigenous community, but this program was created to meet the specific needs of the Indigenous community, including having Indigenous musicians. Patients are connected with the program through the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s Indigenous Health Patient Services.

“Our job is to serve the patient and to provide support,” she said. “We aren’t proselytizing about the organization, or talking about who we are. The job of these musicians is just to come in and play for people, that’s it.”

Grierson said they are thankful to the Sinclair family for the gift because it all goes to pay professional musicians for the hours they play for patients. “This is huge for us,” she said. “This means more patients will have more music visits. It is pretty significant.”