Celebrating – More Like Fear and Loathing – The Opening Of A New Hospital In The Niagara Health System Twilight Zone

A Front-Line Dispatch from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

It was closing in on 10 a.m. this past Thursday, March 7 when I entered the sprawling parking lot of the new hospital complex scheduled to open this March 24, and finally found a place to park my gas guzzler.

It’s a parking lot that you, by the way, will have to pay dollars per hour to park in once this place is open and you may be unfortunate enough to have a loved one needing treatment here. But let’s leave the parking fee column for later, and get back to the grand ceremony at hand.

Wendy Metcalfe, Sun Media editor in chief for the St. Catharines Standard and affiliated media products, plays master of ceremonies for the NHS.

For a few minutes, I sat in my car, thinking about how many dollars each hour visitors to this hospital will soon have to pay just to park in this lot, and listening to a CBC radio newscast followed by a nice eulogy Jian Ghomeshi was airing on his Q show for Stompin’ Tom Conners. All that while, hundreds of invited guests – many of them well-dressed members of the St. Catharines area business elite – were filing in to the new St. Catharines hospital site for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

‘Maybe I should not have come wearing blue jeans’, I thought as I finally got out of my car and headed in through the front doors and down a wide corridor, past a grand piano and tables covered with a fine assortment of finger food where the invited guests mingled. All of this led to a cavernous cafeteria area where, in front of multiple rows of chairs for the guests, video screens were set up at strategic locations away from the podium, to monitor the activities on stage as if this was a Justin Bieber concert in a stadium of 50,000, and people needed the screens to avoid trying to gaze out at someone who looked about the size of a bug on the stage.

I took a seat at the back, and as I sat there wondering how much all of this was costing regional and provincial taxpayers at a time when the provincial government is strapped for cash to spend on health care and the Niagara Health System is faced will millions of dollars of debt, I was reminded by the buzz around me that this was not a day for such thoughts. This was a day for celebration.

They won’t be charging forparking at this hospital until it opens on March 24 so for now, let’s get on with the show.

Niagara’s new hospital, in its final days before opening. Photo by Doug Draper

First on the podium was Gloria Kane, chief planning and development officer for the NHS who saw the vision for this hospital, from the choice of site in west St. Catharines, right through to its construction and who is apparently moving on to a new job somewhere else in the province. (God bless any other community that has to address her planninc skills around where to locate a new hospital or any other  major public institution, for that matter.)

“If you build it, they will come,”  Kane  began, stealing what is by now a tired cliché line from a movie called ‘Field of Dreams’. But never mind, The elite guests in the audience applauded anyway, like the bunch of old, unimaginative and even less courageous ducks most of the chamber of commerce and business elite in the St. Catharines area now are, even as the future of young people here circles the drain) as Kane went on to introduce Wendy Metcalfe, the editor in chief for the St. Catharines Standard and other daily newspapers in Niagara (including the Welland Tribune and Niagara Falls Review) as the events “master of ceremonies.” 

“The newspapers I represent have long been part of this journey,” said Metcalfe, not looking the least bit interested in the possibility that as an editor of newspapers that should be honest brokers and watchdogs for the people in this region need, by keeping a healthy space away from the powers-that-be. It was so obvious, from Metcalfe’s presence at this event that she and the Sun Media/Quebecor corporatin she represents, could not give a fig about old-fashion journalism principles.

Here was an opportunity for Sun Media/Quebecor to say to the local elite – ‘fear us not. … and by the way, support us with your adversiting bucks’.

Now let’s get back to the Metcalfe’ suck-up as I sat there trying to keep my breakfast down, and wondering if I should erase any evidence that I ever worked at the St. Catharines Standard from my resume.

Gloria Kane, the NHS chief planner and one of those primarily responsible for locating this new, state-f-the-art hospital at this site, receives a warm welcome from the St. Catharines elite at any rate. Photo by Doug Draper

“As the slogan says,” continued Metcalfe as she stood before a glassed staircase bearing the words, “We are now standing in one million feet of care. … Just digest that for a moment.”

While the elite guests were digesting that, I was still trying to digest the fact that a  St. Catharines Standard that I had worked for for close to 20 years while the Burgoyne family still ran it as an independent paper it had founded more than a century ago, could have fallen so far. The more I watched Metcalfe operating as the editor in chief of a once proud Standard, the more I was convinced how empty she is of substance compared to great past managing editors like Larry Smith and Murray Thomson. I could have lost anything I might have eaten on my way into this place if I spent any more time dwelling on it.

Indeed, I wonder if either one of those great editors would have accepted the likes of her for a summer internship. Where are those old-fashion journalistic ethics around keeping a safe distance away from the power elites to offer a balanced version of the news for the rest of us?

Next on the podium was St. Catharines MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley, who seemed so comfortably in his skin flirting with the elites in the crowd and with Metcalfe’s Sun Media/Quebecor cohorts, including those who worked for the Standard and shamelessly promoted the NHS through the Standard’s Hollinger, Canwest and Sun Media machinations, and have since left the paper and now work with communications firms contracted by the NHS to promote its messages.

“I can assure you that for me personally, this is a dream come true,” said Bradley as he, who was credited by so many other elites, over and over again, for being such a “champion” for new hospital at this site in his riding. Bradley harkened back to a day in September of 2005 when he and one of his old pals Paul Leon, then chair of the NHS board, and yet another one of his old buddies, the McGuinty Liberal government’s then minister of infrastructure renewal and later disgraced health minster Dave Caplan, announced the province’s decision to pick the west St. Catharines site for the hospital in his riding, despite anything to do with the government’s smart growth/places to grow principles.

But as more recent moves by the province’s Liberal government show around moving proposals to build gas-fired energy plants out of two Liberal ridings in Oakville and Mississauga at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to provincial taxpayers, who cares about principles if a Liberal riding is at stake. So let Bradley bask in whatever glow he gets from the fact that a major hospital facility for Niagara is opening in his riding rather in a more central location for  all the region’s residents.

Next on the podium was Gary Burroughs, chair of Niagara, Ontario’s regional government and someone I continue to believe is an honourable person who is doing the best he can to keep a coalition of local municipalities working together in pretty tough circumstances.

“This new facility,” he said of the new hospital, “is truly a jewel in the Niagara crown. It is a “transition” for Niagara’s 450,000 residents, providing them “access to one of the best health care facilities in the world.”

The mayors of St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Thorold then spoke a few words, and the speeches went on for the better part of another hour, but do you really want to hear it.

Kevin Smith, the provincially appointed supervisor for the NHS until they find a new CEO, also came on to say how leading edge this new hospital is and how medical people from other regions of Canada have already visited for a tour. 

Others spoke messages that included welcoming medical staff from the about-to-close St. Catharines General Hospital and from other hospitals in the region, including the Welland General and Greater Niagara General in Niagara Falls, to the new hospital when it opens on March 24.

There was no sighting of mayors of southern Niagara, except for Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin, and not one mention was made of former NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer, who was in charge through all of the site selection, ground-breaking, and much of the building of this hospital. It was as if she has been completely dumped down a George Orwell ‘memory hole’.  (I couldn’t help thinking again – ‘what in hell did Debbie do wrong? Must have been something pretty bad if they won’t even mention her on a day like this.)

At the end of it all, and just before the ribbon cutting, they invited a clergy person on stage to say a prayer. That is when I bolted my way out of the place. 

In my view, there are no prayers that can make up for the decisions the NHS made, with the complete support of Bradley and the Liberal government, and other politicians serving at the municipal and regional level for St. Catharines now.

Let them pray on their own.

As for me, I might be one of the first  patients in this new hospital facility’s mental health wards, since I kind of felt like I was the only one at these opening ceremonies that could not get into the groove. As the odd person out, maybe that makes me nuts.

Never mind what they have done to access to hospital care in this region. When I think of how much Metcalfe, Sun Media/Quebecor and company have prostituted a once-proud St. Catharines Standard that put the interests of all before the special interests of elites, it makes me want to throw my lap top threw a window.

Hurry up. Strap me in a straight jacket. I can’t afford to put the blows to another lap top.

(Niagara At Large invites anyone who dares to share their first and last name with their comment to share their views on this post. Anonymous comments will not be posted.)