By: Terrie Welwood
It might have taken just a second or two, to absorb the news….
But Deputy Premier Cliff Cullen’s announcement that the province would be taking care of the rest of the money needed to build the expansion of the Community Cancer Care Unit in Russell, was met with cheers, tears and hugs from the ECCC committee members.
The province is providing the $700,000 the Expanding Community Cancer Care Committee (ECCC) needs to meet the $2.5 million dollar goal to pay for construction and equipment costs.
The deputy premier and a number of other MLA’s met in front of the Russell Health Centre last Tuesday for the much-welcomed announcement that construction on the approx. 2,300 square foot addition to the Health Centre can now begin much sooner than expected.
“It feels amazing that finally, finally, finally, our dream has become a reality,” ECCC president Gloria Tibbatts said a few days after the announcement.
And it was a complete surprise Tibbatts said, explaining that in the two weeks prior, the committee members had prepared 350 letters going out to businesses and contacted 72 people from around the area asking them to sign promissory notes as a last-ditch effort to secure enough funding.
“At the ceremony on Tuesday just before he went up to make his announcement, I was telling Deputy Premier Cullen that we were still fundraising and that we had all of these letters ready to go out asking for donations and talking to people about promissory notes,” Tibbatts said. “He looked at me and said ‘I think you can throw your envelopes away’.”
“So this was as much of a surprise to Judy (Forsyth) and I as it was to anyone.”
The Expanding Community Cancer Care committee was officially formed in 2014. The committee is composed of representatives of 15 communities surrounding Russell – including Langenburg and Churchbridge – each striving to move from the very small space it now occupies to a safe, comfortable and positive place for patients and staff.
Since they started with $50 in bank account, there’s been everything from Tim Hortons Smile Cookie campaigns, a gala evening where Dr. Wickus Pietrse auctioned off his prize fedora for a ridiculously wonderful amount, the Annual Walk of Hope (virtual and otherwise), the Crop of Hope, a whole bunch of pie sales, raffles and the always incredible Major Pratt Trojans annual Stick it to Cancer Game.
And that’s only a few of the fundraising events in Russell – not to mention those in each of the other 14 communities such as the Chase the Ace in Rossburn or the recent donation by the Birtle Lions Club. That’s not to say that right up until the announcement, Gloria Tibbatts and Judy Forsyth, who have been at the helm of the ECCC since it started, didn’t hit bureaucratic wall after wall.
Now nearing eight years, Tibbatts said there were times when the group felt they were running out of steam.
“It seemed like we raised so much money and then, all of sudden there was another hurdle to jump over and then another one, and another one.”
It started out as a renovation, Tibbatts said, which set the original cost at $600,000.
Then after an $18,000 study paid for by ECCC, the cost of the renovation to the hospital was now set at $1.4 million.
“Judy (Forsyth) and I called Prairie Mountain Health and said that a cost of $1.4 million without even moving any walls, was ridiculous,” Tibbatts said “We might as well build.”
Right from the beginning though, the group had been told by PMH that a new build was out of the question.
That move meant ECCC had to go a step higher.
“In the close to eight years we’ve been doing this, we’ve gone through three Ministers of Health, two premiers and two CEO’s of Prairie Mountain Health and every Minister of Health and all our MLA’s has toured that building,” Tibbatts said. “And they all agreed that an expansion and an upgrade was definitely needed.”
But nothing happened.
As one last attempt, Tibbatts said, she and Judy decided to go and pay a visit to Audrey Gordon, the latest provincial Minister of Health.
“We were going to go in and sit on her doorstep until she talked to us,” Tibbatts said.
Then, came Covid, followed by the fight for the premiership – and a legal battle about that.
“So, we were waiting again,” Tibbatts said with a laugh.
The plan for Gloria and Judy – who Gloria says have talked every day for close to eight years, was to head to Gordon’s office in February.
Then came the surprise announcement on Jan. 19th from the Minister Gordon’s office that the expansion had finally been approved.
“In February, we knew it was going to cost 2.5 million but we thought, we had raised 1.6 million so we could do this. We thought we had time,” Tibbatts said.
“Then on April 7th, we got an email saying that we had to have all our money in place in promissory notes – before we could even start.”
Once again, the push was on.
For two weeks, phone calls were made and 72 letters were sent out asking for promissory notes for the $700,000 the project was missing.
Now, thanks to the announcement, the promissory notes are no longer needed, Tibbatts said.
That’s not to say that the fundraising won’t continue.
“We are definitely going to keep fundraising until that building is operational and maybe even a bit longer because we need a parking lot and there’s always going to be some furnishings or equipment that we might need,” she said. “This place is supposed to be operational by June of 2023 so there will be things that we’ll need funding for, in the future,” she said. ““And we know there’s always things that will come up along the way – furniture and equipment – things like that that we want to be prepared for.”
To that end, the Walk of Hope is still a GO and is slated for Sept 10th. The Tim Hortons Cookie campaign that raised over $13,000 last year will return in September too. The committee is hoping to bring back the ECCC Gala Evening this spring to celebrate and a golf tournament of two are planned in some of the ECCC communities too.
Now for the logistics….
“We’re working with Prairie Mountain Health on this but what we’re hoping is the building will be attached to the south west wing of the Russell Health Centre and then run along the west side of the property along the tree line because we don’t want to interfere with the Palliative Care sunroom,” Tibbatts explained. “We want to have our own entrance and a parking lot – thus, the need for continued fundraising – so that people can enter the property from the service road and have their own place to park and not have to walk so far.”
Brian Schoonbaert, CEO of the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) says he and his staff are working closely with the ECCC committee members and Cancer Care staff as Russell becomes a hub for PMH as part of Manitoba Clinical and Preventative plan designed to deliver better health care outcomes and shorten wait lists.
“Russell is an absolutely vital health centre within the region and it does serve a large population,” Schoonbaert said, “and the cancer care centre in particular, serves the people of an even larger area.”
“We all know that cancer touches so many or someone around them, very closely,” he added.
“This particular renovation is really aimed at the patients who need a better space to be served as well as the staff who have been working in a space that was never intended for that purpose.”
As such Schoonbaert is so pleased to see it move forward.
“We sort of pigeon holed it into an area and it was never appropriate in the first place,” Schoonbaert said, “so what the ECCC committee rightly recognized was ‘this isn’t good enough, and if we’re saying we’re going to do cancer services, let’s do it in an appropriate space where people are well served’.”
“They were so persistent is getting what they needed done and I’m really glad they were.”
The members of the ECCC committee and staff, he said, continue to play a vital role in the design, moving forward.
“We’ve even attached the sketch that was originally made up by a few of the committee members and that is all going to forward in sending out a request for proposals soon.”
Even before the announcement, Schoonbaert said, the process was moving along quite well.
“Now that the money is behind us, all of that can move along and there’s really no impediment for us to move forward now.”