Myron Garron had been putting on a brave face. Standing in the same hospital where his son Michael was born 53 years earlier, he started thanking family and friends. Then he stopped. Tears had broken through, and his voice had given out.

“I’ll get over it, don’t worry,” he said after a long pause.

Diagnosed with a rare cancer of the soft tissues, Michael died at age 13, in 1975. His dying wish was that he wouldn’t be forgotten.

To honour that wish, Garron and his wife, Berna, on Wednesday donated an unprecedented $50 million to Toronto East General Hospital. And its main campus was renamed the Michael Garron Hospital.

Berna burst into tears as she watched Michael’s name unveiled on the hospital in three-metre-high letters. Later, she confessed to those around her that she hadn’t believed the moment would ever happen until she saw it with her own eyes.

When he knew his time was limited, Michael confessed his biggest fear to Berna: “He thought for sure people would forget him.”

She said she told her son there was no chance of that happening.

“As long as we were alive, he would never be forgotten,” she said.

The Garrons then dedicated their lives to fulfilling Michael’s wish. On Wednesday morning, it came true.

The Garrons’ gift is one of the biggest private donations ever to a hospital in Canada. Hospital president and CEO Sarah Downey said it will have an enormous impact.

“Oh my god, it’s huge,” she said, adding the money will help in three main areas: bringing in new equipment, creating research chair positions, and applying for funds in clinical innovation.

“The community will have much faster access to health technology, health care providers (will be) better equipped for their jobs, and (the hospital will have) access, in time, to additional experts,” she said.

But importantly, the donation also means Michael’s wish has been fulfilled, she said.

For the Garrons, that’s what matters.

Two years and nine months after Myron and Berna married, Michael was born. Myron wasn’t allowed to attend the birth, as he had to fill out paperwork, he recalled Wednesday. By the time he was done, he was led to a room on the second floor, where his doctor was waiting.

“He had a little bundle in his arms, and it so happens that was the first appearance of Michael,” he said.

Berna Garron has tried to keep Michael’s memory alive by making sure his story is known by as many people as possible. She remembers him as a young man who never gave up, despite constant setbacks.

When Michael was 3 years old, a lump appeared on his hand. At first doctors thought it was just a cyst, but eventually they figured out it was synovial sarcoma. The tumour was removed, along with his hand, but another was discovered behind his heart, and he died shortly after.

He was right-handed, and when his cancer meant amputating his right middle finger, then his hand up to his elbow, Berna Garron said, he just learned how to do everything with his left hand.

“His (code) was to always be positive, and never give up,” she said.

This is not the first major donation the Garrons, who owned a successful automotive parts manufacturing business, have made to a Toronto hospital on Michael’s behalf. In 2010 they donated $30 million to the Hospital for Sick Children, and with the money established the Garron Family Cancer Centre at the hospital.

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Now, Michael’s name will be remembered through the hospital that carries his legacy. Though Berna Garron always knew she would do everything in her power to fulfill Michael’s wish, she said, there was no way she could have predicted this.

“We had no idea that it would be like this, 40 years on.”