It’s a place where there’s always a pot of soup on. Homemade muffins and cookies are never in short supply. A pantry stocked with cold drinks, yogurt, puddings and healthy snacks are also always available. A shower room for family members who cannot bring themselves to leave. Laundry facilities. Quiet rooms to step away from the bedside. A fireplace. A patio off every private room, with doors wide enough for a bed to fit through, so patients can feel the fresh air.
These are the home-like features that define AB Smith Homestead House, Providence Care’s hospice located at 152 Phillips Street in Kingston. "While at hospice, the pressure of being a caregiver is lifted. The wife can be a wife again, the son can be a son, and the daughter can be the daughter," says Donna Dwyre, Associate Director of Healthcare Advancement at Providence Care. "Instead of focusing on caregiving tasks, families can spend quality time together. They can simply be present with one another."
“The pressure of being a caregiver is lifted. The wife can be a wife again, the son can be a son, and the daughter can be a daughter. Family can simply be present with one another." — Donna Dwyre, Associate Director, Healthcare Advancement, Providence Care
The ten-bed facility, with nine beds currently funded, was built with a singular focus: to give people the gift of a peaceful death, surrounded by those they love, in a home-like setting. Six of the nine beds are cuddle beds, which expand to double size so that family members can climb in beside their loved ones. A spiritual health care provider is on staff. The spiritual room supports smudging, and a fire pit is available for sacred fires, with a city permit in place, to honour Indigenous traditions after a death. Volunteers sit at the welcome desk, make the muffins, visit with families, and, when the call goes out, will come in at any hour of the night to sit with someone who might otherwise die alone.
"No one dies alone here," says Dwyre. "That's something."
The clinical team is equally considered. Staff choose to work at AB Smith Homestead House because palliative care is their passion, and that dedication shows. Personal support workers, registered practical nurses, and registered nurses are on every shift, supported by physicians from the Queen's Division of Palliative Medicine who provide consistent care whether a patient is palliating at home, at Kingston General Hospital, at Providence Care Hospital, or at AB Smith Homestead House. A grief and bereavement coordinator, provincially funded, provides professional therapeutic support for families navigating anticipatory grief or loss after a loved one has died.
Krista Wells Pearce, Providence Care’s Vice President, Corporate Services and Executive Director, Providence Care Hospice, is candid about the funding realities the facility faces. Provincial funding covers approximately 50 percent of operating costs, with the remainder dependent on community support. "It's really tough," she says. "Which is why receiving grants like this and having endowment funds in place is so incredible. It sustains operations."
That community support showed up in a meaningful way this summer. Providence Care applied to the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area's spring 2026 community grants for operational funding, and while reviewers recommended the application, there were insufficient funds available to fulfil it at that time. Rather than let the application go unfunded, Donor Experience Officer Amanda Amesse reached out to the Community Foundation's donor-advised fund advisors, sharing a handful of projects that aligned with their giving interests. Two donors whose passions centred on local health care responded quickly and without hesitation. "It was a no-brainer for them," Amesse said. "You could really feel the care that they have for Providence Care Hospice." The result was a grant of $13,330, presented to Krista Wells Pearce and Donna Dwyre by Amesse and Community Impact Officer Chara Gerow.
That community generosity has defined Providence Care’s AB Smith Homestead House from the beginning. Approximately 85 percent of the capital campaign that built the facility came from the community. It is named for philanthropist Arthur Britton Smith, known as ‘Brit,’ by most, and the company he founded, Homestead Landholdings Limited. The support by both Brit and Homestead made the opening of Kingston’s first hospice house possible. Brit passed away at Providence Care Hospital in 2023, two years before the doors to hospice opened, but not before joking to the Campaign Cabinet Chair: "You've got to get that open for me."
Sixteen months after opening its doors, Providence Care’s AB Smith Homestead House is giving families more options for end-of-life care in the Kingston region. Families who may have struggled to manage complex care needs at home are finding support, comfort and around-the-clock care in a place designed to feel like home. Built through the generosity of the community and sustained by that same spirit today, AB Smith Homestead House is, in many ways, a place created by the community, for the community.
You can donate to the Providence Care Hospice Fund here.
