It’s time

It was a day 11 years in the making. Last week we learned Prince Edward County would get a new hospital. No longer an if, but rather a when. There is more work to do, but by reaching Stage 3, our hospital’s future is now squarely in our hands. It is our job to make this happen. That means writing cheques. It means putting our money behind our conviction that Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital is, and forever will be, an essential life-giving place in our community.

I believe it will happen. But now is not the moment to be complacent. Now is not when we can leave it to others to carry the burden. It is our moment. Our time. Our duty.

I have been thinking about how I and my family can do our share, and have come to a decision. My logic is this: The building campaign needs $16.5 million, and there are about 25,000 folks living here. That works out to about $660 per person. I have a family of six, and while we are by no means wealthy, we can afford to carry that burden and a little bit more. So we will. We also operate a business here that relies on a viable hospital and the healthcare ecosystem it has created and nurtured. So we will make another contribution on behalf of this business.

I am laying this bare, not as a means to coerce or to signal virtue (or shortcoming), but rather to gently suggest that the time has come for each of us put some thought to how much we are prepared to pay for the renewal our House of Healing, as the late Al Capon put it so aptly many years ago.

So enough about that. For now.

I want to pick up on Councillor Bill Roberts’ insightful comments in this paper and elsewhere last week, where he illuminated the contributions of Quinte West Mayor Jim Harrison, former provincial health minister Dr. Eric Hoskins and former Local Health Integration Network head Paul Huras, each of whom played distinct roles in tipping the prospect of a new hospital into a full-fledged project. Councillor Roberts, too, has been intimate with the hospital plans in recent years, and his own behind-the-scenes actions deserve our praise and recognition.

There are a few other folks that also deserve acknowledgment at this time. Councillor Roberts mentioned former Mayor Leo Finnegan, but I am sure he will allow me to highlight Leo’s contribution a bit more emphatically.

Leo got into municipal politics with a passion for two things: the environment and our hospital. His working career was spent at the cement plant, working up through the ranks to become a successful manager for many years. Yet it was his volunteer work spearheading the Prince Edward Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (PERTEE) and his work fighting for and support of PECMH that drew him to Shire Hall. He felt deeply that these were matters that needed more attention from municipal leaders. So, he ran for mayor in 2003, having never served on council, and he won.

It was a tough period for the hospital. Each year, the corporation that had amalgamated the Picton hospital with Belleville General, Trenton Memorial (TMH) and North Hastings, faced a financial crisis. Most years, it failed to balance its books, requiring a bail-out from the province. In response, the corporation cut relentlessly, mostly to PECMH and Trenton Memorial. It reasoned that the centralization of services was the singular way to reduce costs while maintaining services. Meanwhile, a growing chorus of corporation insiders argued that both PECMH and North Hastings ought to be eliminated altogether, and TMH greatly diminished so that those resources could be used to shore up finances at Belleville General.

Finnegan, and others in our community, fought the corporation at every step. He did so, respectfully, wisely, and tirelessly. Leo represented our community on the hospital board, arguing forcefully that this hospital could not withstand more cuts. He did this, until, that is, the corporation maneuvered to oust him and other regional mayors from this governing body.

Finnegan orchestrated massive rallies filling the community hall in Picton to resist the corporation’s attack on our hospital. These collective protests eventually put enough pressure on the corporation—indeed, the province—that it could no longer ignore this community that wasn’t ready to roll over and let its hospital slip away.

In the summer of 2009, Finnegan wrote to then- Health Minister Deb Matthews, in his capacity of the newly formed Prince Edward County Health Care Alliance. Using more diplomatic language than I might ever muster, Leo explained that calm between Prince Edward County and the hospital corporation would only be restored with the assurance of the viability of PECMH. And that that assurance had to be in the form of the redevelopment of the Picton Hospital.

Even after the battle had reduced to a withering slow-motion shuttering of PECMH, Mayor Finnegan continued to work tirelessly, shuttling back and forth between this community and corporation management to carve out a peaceful way forward.

I expect that among Mayor Finnegan’s proudest days was May 4, 2011, when QHC’s Katherine Stansfield and Barb Proctor (then head of the Alliance) stood before an assembled group of community members and media to announce that plans were now officially underway that would see a new hospital built in Picton. It is indeed a day those of us who were present will never forget. It was the first time in many years, after so many cuts to nurses, maternity, day surgeries, and other things that make up a hospital, that it felt as though PECMH might survive this existential threat.

After a decade of cuts, we were now talking about building a new hospital. A new future. If not for Mayor Leo Finnegan, and others I intend to write about in the days ahead, we might not have a hospital to fight for.

Thank you, Leo.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca