Dedicated to improving the quality of life for families immigrating to Canada, choosing Guelph as their home.
Michael Delisle and Sandra McCormick married in 1973. They shared a knowledge and appreciation of their families’ immigration stories, understanding the promise Canada extended to grandparents who came here to provide opportunities, freedoms and safety to their children and their children’s children.
Mike and Sandra and their family have always understood that their good fortune to live in a free country allowing for their education and prosperity is the direct result of the strength and sacrifice of their grandparents. And over the years stories about the journeys made by their grandparents have become an important part of their family lore.
Over their fifty years of marriage Mike and Sandra lived with intention. While holding jobs and with the help of student loans and scholarship opportunities, they both completed undergraduate and graduate degrees. They worked hard, lived with joy, eventually raising their children in Guelph. Guelph was their home for forty-one years, arriving when their daughters were just four and 18 months old and Guelph is where their son was born three years later.
Often around the dinner table, Mike and Sandra talked with their children about best ways to give back. In particular, Mike talked about starting a family foundation to help their community in some meaningful way. The hopes of helping other families was the understood goal.
Looking back at the stories of their grandparents immigrating from Italy and Poland and Ireland, instilled in Mike and Sandra a desire to help new families making similar journeys across the world today.
In 2022 Michael, at the age of seventy, sold his business and started the process of retirement. At that time he joined the board of Guelph Community Foundations. He saw up close the organization’s commitment to prudent stewardship and the value in having such an organization at the helm of individual family funds.
At the beginning of 2024 Mike and Sandra decided to approach GCF with their ideas for the McCormick Delisle Family Fund. Before they had made the arrangements, Mike tragically and shockingly died in his home on an evening like any other. Completely undetected, he had been living with heart disease. His death was instant, the shock to Sandra and their children, grandchildren, family and friends was deep.
Sandra and children Amy, Emily and Gregory contacted GCF to make sure Mike’s wishes to put an endowment fund in place would be fulfilled.
The McCormick Delisle Family Fund is dedicated to improving the health, welfare and quality of life in the communities served by the Foundation, specifically organizations that support families immigrating to Canada.
Sandra and her children will watch over the fund as it grows to provide a substantial grant annually through one of the community charities established for the purpose of supporting new immigrant families.
That growth will come from investments monitored by GCF, continued donations and through other methods of fund raising that the family will oversee. Donations made in Mike’s name following his memorial have been added to the initial donation made by Sandra, a donation Mike and Sandra had decided on before his death.
Sandra, Amy, Emily and Gregory hope to honour Mike through this endowment fund which will stand as a legacy to his personal commitment to the City of Guelph and his belief that all people deserve the conditions that allow them to thrive.
Mike gave of himself to his community throughout his years. In addition to being a board member of GCF, he was on the board of The St. Joseph’s Hospital, he worked for the CCAC and LHIN, was on a city commission looking into solutions for the unhoused. He initiated the Guelph Quality Awards and he coached his children’s sports teams and was active in their school parent groups throughout many years.
But above all, and clear to all who knew him, family was Mike’s top priority in life. He will be missed in the deepest parts of the hearts and minds of those of us who have loved Michael Delisle. Helping other families just starting their stories in Canada will be a meaningful legacy to his memory.