From left: St. Boniface Hospital nurses Chloe Dueck, Tolu Akinloya, and Eva Marie Duro are the 2026 Wyrzykowski Family Graduate Nurse Award winners.
May 28, 2026
When Eva Marie Duro looks at her patients, she sees family members.
Duro has been a Licensed Practical Nurse in Internal Medicine and Oncology at St. Boniface Hospital since the fall of 2025. She, along with fellow nurses Chloe Dueck and Tolulope (Tolu) Akinloya, were this year’s three lucky recipients of the Wyrzykowski Family Graduate Nurse Awards.
The Wyrzykowski family – longtime and generous supporters of the Hospital – established an endowment fund with the Foundation in 2019 for graduates employed in their first nursing jobs.
“When I take care of my patients, I see my grandma. I see my mom. I see my dad,” said Duro, who grew up in the Philippines. She says nurses need to have heart and passion for the profession to be successful.
“It’s like paying it forward,” she continued. “Because my parents may also get sick someday. I would want somebody else to take care of them how I would. When I care for someone who is elderly, I see my grandma in them. I feel like I’m making connections to my family back home as well.”
Duro (at left, with siblings Sharon Brand and Conrad Wyrzykowski Jr.) moved to join family in Winnipeg in 2016, hoping to find “greener pastures and opportunity.” After others working in health care encouraged her to pursue nursing as a career, she applied and was accepted in 2023 into the two-year Practical Nursing diploma program at Assiniboine College in Portage la Prairie.
Wins came out of nowhere
Meanwhile, Chloe Dueck and Tolu Akinloya are recent Bachelor of Nursing program graduates from the University of Manitoba.
Graduate Nurse Award winners are often surprised each year to learn they have been selected.
“When my manager pulled me into the office, I was shocked…to be one of the three was like surprising, because I know there are so many new nurses that we graduated with. I was almost in tears. I was like, ‘What the heck?’ I didn’t do anything for this,” remembered Dueck, who is an Operating Room nurse at the Hospital.
Akinloya, a float pool nurse on the Specialty Resource Team, was uplifted by the win. At the time of this writing, he was posted in the Cardiac Surgery Unit, taking care of patients post surgery.
“For new grads especially, it kind of motivates you, knowing that you’re seen in the Hospital for the work you do. It’s hard being a new grad in the first place. I think other nurses seeing you getting an award like this kind of motivates them, that you’re being seen,” he said.
Being the patient’s voice
All three nurses say being a patient’s advocate is important to them. In many of their cases, a patient literally cannot speak for themselves when they are under sedation or have a medical condition that doesn’t allow them.
Akinloya points to his ability to see, understand, and relate to people’s struggles when they are in the Hospital. “Being able to know when they need something; advocating for that,” he said.
“Sometimes the health-care team aren’t able to see firsthand what nurses see, and experience how patients are able to express their concerns with nurses,” he explained. “Because you’re always at the bedside 24-7, just being able to advocate on their behalf is important.”
“I chose nursing because I enjoy helping people. I feel like it brings such purpose to my life.”
Dueck shares his viewpoint. “Especially in the operating room, people are nervous coming in. That’s common to see, and fair enough. You’re greeting the patient and they’re telling you what you need to know so that you can advocate for them to the surgeons and anesthetists. And even when they’re asleep, we’re watching out for them,” she said. “We’re all on the same team and we’re there for the patient.”
“I chose nursing because I enjoy helping people. I feel like it brings such purpose to my life. And I like being there for them when they’re going through really hard times. I guess I can be like a light for them,” she added.
Family boosts “great” nurses
Speaking for his family before the awards ceremony in the Everett Atrium at the end of National Nursing Week, Conrad Wyrzykowski Jr. (at right, with Dueck) called nurses at St. B critical to patient care.
“Nurses are just really great people,” he said. The idea behind the Wyrzykowski Family Graduate Nurse endowment fund was to help grads establish themselves at the Hospital and hopefully to stay long-term.
“That’s why the criteria for this award is wide open,” Wyrzykowski explained. “You’ve graduated, you put the time in, and this is your first job.”
The recognition means a lot, said Duro. “When I started at St. Boniface Hospital, one of my main goals was to work, work, and work until I pay off all my debts from going back to school. And so, I’ve been picking up shifts when I can, paying off my debts slowly,” she said. “When I received the call, it lifted a lot of the burden for me.”
It didn’t take Dueck long to come up with a plan. “My manager put it in my head. She was like, ‘Oh, you can go on vacation now.’ And I’m like, actually, yeah, because my husband and I haven’t gone on our honeymoon. We were married two years ago. So, he and I talked about that; I think we’re going to go now,” she said.
One thing all three winners agree on is their gratitude to the Wyrzykowski family. “As new grads, it’s really hard to come out of nursing school like, money wise and then also even emotionally, it’s draining,” Dueck said. “So, it just feels like such a huge help. I think it’s super generous of them.”