South Walkerville residents thank Windsor Regional Hospital workers in epic video

South Walkerville resident Jill Moysiuk knows she lives in a special neighbourhood that has been rallying together ever since the COVID-19 pandemic started.

So she knew they'd be willing to do something special to thank health-care workers at the nearby Windsor Regional Hospital's Met Campus.

"This neighborhood always watched when the hospital staff park and walked to the hospital every day and you know typically we would always exchange hellos and smiles and that kind of thing," said Moysiuk.

"But lately when you see them since the pandemic, your spirit wants to sort of reach out to them and hug them and say thank you for what they've been doing for us. And that's obviously not possible right now. So that's where this whole thing came about."

Moysiuk used her neighbourhood's Facebook group to help arrange a physically-distanced block party of sorts — where as many as 200 residents made signs and stood outside to thank the workers.

WATCH | South Walkerville residents thank Windsor Regional Hospital staff for their hard work:

A friend of Moysiuk reached out to third-year nursing student and videographer Attila Gombos to capture the whole thing. 

"It was a lot of fun and it was just good to be out there doing something nice for people," said Gombos. "People are really down so it's nice to have some positivity."

Gombos has had three shifts at Windsor Regional Hospital — and on his first day, CEO and president David Musyj shared the video with the staff. 

"I'm trying to do as much as possible to help out," said Gombos, who has also run a production company for the last four years. 

"He blew everyone away with the video," said Moysiuk.

"He was on board right away and then of course he has such a special tie to this given he started his career as a nurse the day that it was released ... so it was just a really cool thing for him to do — to me it was really special, I loved that that piece of it."

Since the video went public, U.S. country music star Tim McGraw has used pieces of the tape in his own music video tribute to health-care workers around the world. 

"It's been so humbling because it's you know this little sort of grassroots thing that we wanted to do for the Windsor Regional Hospital employees and our health care employees within the city that's being seen literally around the world," said Moysiuk.

Moysiuk said she heard the video is being played on loop at local health-care facilities, and she hopes it's making a difference to those workers. 

"I'm just really grateful for everybody's involvement and I'm so glad to see that something like this that was so positive is doing exactly sort of what it was intended to do."