SASKATOON, Sask. — STARS Air Ambulance has been a significant part of Shelly Campbell’s life. Growing up, she watched her mother work as a volunteer co-ordinator in Sundre, Alta. She helped sell STARS calendars and raise money to fund the organization’s lifesaving work.
She admired STARS' shiny red helicopters and even dreamt of someday flying one as a pilot. Years later, that dream became a reality, but in a different situation that she never expected: being a STARS patient herself due to a life-threatening incident.
Campbell, while giving birth to her first son in Sundre’s hospital, experienced a major hemorrhage that required urgent medical attention. Unfortunately, the town lacked an operating room or its own blood supply for transfusions, and her situation was the kind of emergency STARS was tasked to handle.
The clock was ticking, and Campbell needed to be in a larger health-care facility that deals with patients with complex needs. She recalled it was minus 30 C, pre-dawn and snowy back then, and the land-based ambulances in the area were already responding to other calls.
“My situation turned into exactly the kind of mission that STARS was made for. They were the most efficient, fastest avenue to get me to the complex care I needed in my golden hour,” said Campbell during the launch of the 2027 STARS calendar on Wednesday, Sept. 23, at the air ambulance’s hangar.
STARS president and CEO John Froh, STARS brand and marketing executive director Angela Anderson-Blent and Bunge senior manager Brandon Sander joined Campbell at the launch. Bunge, formerly Viterra, has covered the printing costs of all calendars for more than a decade.
Years later, Campbell, now an artist, has found another way to give back to the organization that helped save her life through her art. A longtime aviation art enthusiast, she said she loves painting metal birds and had always wanted to paint a STARS helicopter because of its distinctive appearance.
Even before becoming a STARS patient, she had envisioned painting one of the helicopters, taking the artwork to her local base and donating it. But raising a young family put the idea on hold until she came across a call for artists on social media.
Campbell applied and was selected from a group of artists to create artwork for the calendar, a project that brought together two parts of her life: her past connection to STARS and her passion for aviation art. The painting also allowed Campbell to explore the meaning behind the “golden hour.”
The term is associated with STARS missions and the critical window when patients need definitive care. As a STARS volunteer, she was already familiar with that meaning, but she found another connection through her work as an artist.
“In film, in cinematography, the golden hour is that last hour before sunset when the lighting gets really soft and dramatic,” said Campbell, adding that she wanted to capture that fleeting quality in her painting while connecting it to STARS’ medical mission.
Campbell depicted the helicopter arriving just before dusk, with the aircraft surrounded by a glowing, dramatic sky. The scene represents both meanings of the golden hour, the brief period of ideal light for an artist and the precious time STARS crews have to get patients to the care they need.
“We are getting there in somebody’s hour of need to get them to the complex care they need before the sun can set on them,” said Campbell, who saw her 2027 calendar artwork as more than a painting of a helicopter but also a personal reflection of her connection to STARS.
Campbell’s STARS journey has come full circle: from watching her mother as one of the volunteers growing up, to a life-changing experience as a patient and contributing to the organization’s mission through her artwork used for the 2027 calendar, images that tell the stories of other STARS patients.
Every dollar raised from calendars sold fuels the mission of the STARS air ambulance team — from the pilots and paramedics to other support staff. Last year, STARS sold more than 40,000 calendars. Since the project’s launch in 1993, it has celebrated the impact it has created.
Helping communities
Froh said the organization’s annual calendar remains an important connection between its supporters and its lifesaving mission rooted in the communities it serves across Western Canada. He added it also reflects a Prairie tradition of fundraising and connection to STARS’ work.
Froh, whose connection to STARS began during his trauma training at Foothills Medical Centre before it had a Saskatchewan base, said people who purchase the 2027 calendar can look through its pages and learn the stories of individuals helped by the organization’s mission.
He joined STARS when it opened its Saskatoon base in 2012 and recalled the calendar's impact on communities and the organization’s identity. He explained that the 2027 calendar’s “golden hour” theme reflects the importance of timely medical care.
Froh said STARS was founded on the idea that patients could receive better care more quickly, and the organization continues to look for ways to improve response times, including faster dispatch, delivering care before crews arrive and using technology.
Sander highlighted the personal importance of STARS and its connection to rural communities, saying he and his family live about an hour to an hour and a half from a town and that several friends and family members have relied on the service.
He recounted a recent incident involving his mother’s boyfriend, who was seriously injured in a head-on collision more than two hours from a hospital. Sander said that if he had not been airlifted by STARS to Saskatoon, he would have died; the service literally saved his life.
