Still some fight in the dog

POOCH asks for help: Right to left is Al Reimers (with microphone), Leo Finnegan, Dave Gray Betsy Sinclair and Wolf Braun. They made an appeal for broader support for their efforts to wrest PECMH out of QHC and return it to the community at a gathering at the United Church in Picton last week.

Gathering finds strong support for continuing effort to save PECMH

The movement know as P.O.O.C.H. (Patron Of Our County Hospital) is at a crossroads. P.O.O.C.H was an initiative formed originally by Wellington resident Dave Gray to protest disproportionate service and bed cuts to Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital by QHC this past spring.

That was when QHC officials concluded that to balance its budget it would do so by cutting 40 per cent of the beds and nursing resources from PECMH—but just five per cent of the beds from Belleville General Hospital.

This seemed utterly unfair, particularly given that the Picton hospital had already lost half of its 42 beds since forced into amalgamation with Belleville General, Trenton Memorial and North Hastings Hospital in 1998.

Gray and a handful of other organized a grassroots campaign to fill four buses to take the fight to Queen’s Park in Toronto.

There a delegation met briefly with Ontario health minister Deb Matthews and other officials, including local MPP Todd Smith. But since then, P.O.O.C.H as a movement has sputtered. Last month Matthews wrote to say her department wouldn’t consider reestablishing PECMH as a stand-alone hospital.

So last week, P.O.O.C.H. members and others gathered in a warm and sticky United Church in Picton to decide how to proceed, if at all. P.O.O.C.H. member Al Reimers laid out the options.

“We can either keep fighting to get our hospital back, try to work with QHC to make the most of the situation, or we can quit,” explained Reimers.

Few, if any, on this hot night were ready to give up the fight. Nor were they prepared to trust QHC with dwindling resources at their local hospital.

“I’m sick of government bullying,” said County resident Honey King. “Our needs are miniscule compared with the amount this government has wasted on moving two gas plants. It’s time to fight. We need a revolution.”

Wellington resident Ian Inrig rose from the crowd to remind the gathering that 70 years ago that day Prince Edward County boys were part of the invading force into Sicily.

“We talk now of the D-Day invasion,” explained Inrig. “But these were the boys that invaded Europe first. They had a fighting spirit. They were trained and determined.”

Inrig said the effort to extract the Picton hospital from QHC must grow—that we must summon the same determination found by the young County men coming ashore in Italy seven decades ago.

“This fight is too big a task for the small group that is P.O.O.C.H. Give us your energy and talents. If that happens we will win.”

P.O.O.C.H member Wolf Braun agreed.

We need to grow. We need a whole lot more volunteers. We need your help,” said Braun. We are not going to accept what QHC the LHIN and government tells us we must.”

Braun urged fellow residents not to roll over to bureaucratic dictates.

“In a democracy we give our permission to be governed. We have not given our permission to this government or QHC to close our hospital.”

P.O.O.C.H. member Leo Finnegan told the gathering that he had hoped he could work with QHC administrator Mary Clare Egberts but now realized that wasn’t possible.

“She promised me the cuts would be across the board and not targeted on Picton,” said Finnegan. “But of course we all know that did not happen. I later told her that I had lost faith in her management of our hospital.

When the meeting ended many folks young and old assembled at the front of the room to praise the work done by P.O.O.C.H. so far and to offer their energy and talents to the fight.

P.O.O.C.H. is online with a Facebook page. Look for CountyPooch.