ANNUAL REPORT 2025 / 2026
That is the goal of recreation therapy, 
an approach to rehabilitation that uses 
leisure, hobbies, and personal interests as 
therapeutic tools. 
“The goal is quality of life,” says Janine Durocher, a 
recreation therapy assistant at the Glenrose. “When 
people come to the hospital, enjoying their hobbies often 
looks different than it did before. We want to show them 
they can still do the things they love — it might just look a 
little different.”
For patients navigating injury, illness, or disability, 
recreation activities can provide opportunities to rebuild 
confidence, rediscover purpose, and reconnect with 
passions — old and new. Through recreation, therapists 
help patients work toward physical, cognitive, emotional, 
and creative goals while participating in activities they 
genuinely enjoy. 
Sometimes that means introducing someone to a new 
hobby. Other times, it’s helping someone rediscover one 
they thought they had lost. Recently, recreation therapy 
at the Glenrose has been helping patients explore those 
possibilities through a woodworking project: building 
birdhouses.
The birdhouse project was made possible through a 
partnership between the Glenrose Hospital Foundation 
and Edmonton Men’s Shed, a volunteer organization that 
builds community by bringing people together through 
woodworking and hands-on projects. Members of Men’s 
Shed assembled the birdhouse kits, while Foundation 
funding helped purchase the materials, making the 
project available to patients at the Glenrose.
What if rehabilitation 
could feel like doing 
the things you love? 
A birdhouse 
made by a former 
Glenrose patient
Leisure is 
Medicine

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