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A hospital built to remember 3 young men lost to war

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Here is another in a series of 3 stories that bring perspective to our local military history. Michael Dawe explains the history of the Red Deer Memorial Hospital.

The origins of the Red Deer Hospital go back to the beginning of the last century. Great Britain and her colonies became embroiled in the Boer War in South Africa. A number of young men from Red Deer and area went overseas to fight for the Empire.

On July 1, 1900, 22-year old Angus Jenkins of Red Deer was killed near Watervaal when his outfit was ambushed by a group of Boers. He was the first Red Deer resident and the first member of the Lord Strathcona Horse to be killed in action. Shortly thereafter, the community learned of the death of Archibald McNichol. In September, word came that Charles Cruickshanks had been killed near Bad Fontein.

On October 21, 1900, a large public service was held at the Methodist Church in memory of these three young men. At a subsequent public meeting, it was decided to build a hospital as a permanent memorial to them.

Early in 1901, an eight-member hospital board was formed with George W. Greene, a local lawyer, as the first chair. A public fundraising campaign was launched.

The board was given the money which had been collected at the memorial service for the Patriotic Fund. By January 1902, $1100 in pledges had been collected in the community. Lord Strathcona sent a cheque for another $1000.

The Victorian Order of Nurses promised $2000 and donated the plans and specifications for a 13-bed facility. Later, the hospital board passed a resolution officially affiliating the hospital with the V.O.N.

Initially, the board wanted to build the hospital on a site on the north side of the river, east of the Gaetz Avenue traffic bridge. However, Edward Michener and John T. Moore offered generous financial assistance towards the purchase of property on the top of the South Hill. In the spring of 1903, work began on this site.

The pace of construction was slow. Work on the superstructure did not get underway until August. There was a continual shortage of funds. Town Council was asked for an exemption from taxes and either a donation of money or a loan. In response, Council offered to pay off, with a donation of labour, any debt left after the completion of construction.

Finally, in April 1904, the building was ready for occupancy. A member of the V.O.N., Miss Wright, was hired as matron with a salary of $50 per month. The hospital board set the admission fees for patients at $7 for public wards and $10 for private rooms. Patients were expected to supply their own medicines and surgical dressings.

The first patient, W.N. Snider, was admitted to the hospital with a case of typhoid fever on the same day that the matron arrived for work. He unfortunately suffered a relapse and passed away on July 7th. On April 25th, Dr. Henrietta Denovan, assisted by her husband Dr. Howard Denovan, performed the first surgical operation. On May 3rd, the hospital board established a fee schedule for the use of the operating room.

The Women’s Hospital Aid Society gave the hospital a tremendous boost in raising funds to furnish the building. In October 1904, a young women’s organization, the Alexandra Club, was formed to also support the hospital. One of their more successful fundraising ideas was the creation of women’s hockey teams, the Stars and the Skookums.

The hospital board raised additional funds by selling “admittance tickets” at a rate of $5 per year for individuals and $10 annually for families. Local businesses were offered this form of hospital insurance for their employees at a cost of $1 per month per person.

Red Deer, although still a small town of only 1000 residents, now had the only hospital between Calgary and Edmonton.

Read about our region’s connection to the Lord Strathcona’s Horse.

President Todayville Inc., Honorary Colonel 41 Signal Regiment, Board Member Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Award Foundation, Director Canadian Forces Liaison Council (Alberta) musician, photographer, former VP/GM CTV Edmonton.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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