St. Vincent’s Heather Long Term Care Home development begins in summer

It’s been seven years since Fiona Dalton moved to Canada from the United Kingdom to take the position of CEO and president of Providence Health Care, and she still recalls her shock during a tour of Providence sites at how seniors were housed.

She told of seeing a particular Providence hospital’s long-term care unit. “I just felt physically ill,” she said.

“This is where we keep our seniors? We look after people and this is their home? In a space where there are four people in one room and it’s not even big enough to have your own wardrobe with your own clothes in?’”

Dalton shared the memory in her remarks at a May 30 blessing for the start of construction of the $207 million St. Vincent’s Heather Long Term Care Home in Vancouver. Excavation is scheduled to begin this summer, with the 13-storey 240-bed home expected to open in late 2028.

Dozens of Providence staff, First Nations representatives, construction representatives and guests gathered for the ceremony, with Archbishop Richard Smith taking part in one of his first public functions since being installed two weeks earlier.

A unifying theme ran through speakers’ remarks: the Indigenous and religious history that had brought everyone together for the blessing, and the care, dignity and connecting of generations that will be emphasized at the new residence.

Dalton recalled how seniors suffered so badly during the pandemic. The physical environment in which seniors were kept was “not good enough for the people that I love,” she said. “That means it’s not good enough for anyone.”

It became apparent to Providence “that we collectively need to do something better,” she said. “We knew that it would be easy for the world to kind of move on after the pandemic and have other priorities, but this would remain a priority for us.”

The priority of care and compassion is the same one that religious sisters brought to health care, said Paul Brown, chair of the Providence Health Care Society.

Brown noted that the First Nations ground awakening ceremony that began the site blessing “reminds us of the sacredness of this land, the importance of relationship, and the responsibilities we carry as we begin this work,” said Brown.

“The legacy of Catholic health care in Canada is a testament to the dedication of religious women who provided compassionate service to those in need long before the establishment of our universal health care system,” he said.

The Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception from New Brunswick played a key role in founding the original St. Vincent’s Hospital in the 1930s, he said, on the same site where the new residence will be built. St. Vincent’s was closed in 2004.

The sisters had the foresight to acquire a large property with room to expand into a 250-bed health care complex, providing emergency, acute psychiatric and a range of outpatient and diagnostic services before eventually focusing on seniors care at the adjacent St. Vincent’s Honoria Conway-Heather assisted living home, which opened in 2008.

The new residence will continue that centuries-old tradition of Catholic health care, Brown said, “to uphold the dignity of the human person by addressing unmet needs and creating communities of care and healing for all.”

First Nations speakers drew particular attention to the need for inter-generational relationship, with Calvin Guerin of the Musqueam First Nation thanking those attending for honouring the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh host nations.

“In the teachings of the guardians of this land, our elders are some of the first people that raise our children,” he said. “It is crucial to us that for the first few years of life we were raised by mothers, and then once after that we were raised by our grandparents.”

In like manner, the new St. Vincent’s residence will not only have seniors residing, but also day care facilities.

“You’re not only creating public space for elderly and children,” said Guerin. “You’re conducting yourselves in a traditional manner” like the people of the Coast Salish territory.

The new facility will have “elderly people among young children, and it’s a safe space for the two of them to collaborate on their thoughts and feelings because they are the oldest of this land and then the children are the newest of this land, and those two go hand in hand in many of our cultures here.”

His brother Victor also reflected on the traditional integration of children and grandchildren, thanking Providence “for the work you’re doing building the facility for caring for the elders as well as watching over children well into the future. As my brother Calvin said, this is the natural way for our people.”

Providence Living CEO Mark Blandford also noted how the long-term care facility would follow the tradition of the Sisters of Charity, with a new model of care called ‘Home For Us,’ based on a European dementia village concept.

Providence is taking the model across British Columbia as it builds long-term care in Comox, Prince George, Quesnel and Smithers.

His answer to someone who asked him “Why Catholic health care in Prince George?” was, “Because that’s the lesson that the sisters gave us. We go where nobody else wants to go. We deliver what nobody else wants to do, and we do it better than anybody.”

Like the sisters, he said, “our mission is not just to build great buildings and look back and admire them. Our mission is to give the care to those seniors that come to us in a way that they can feel comfortable, they can feel looked after, they can feel safe, and they can feel wanted.”

He recounted how he asked a woman in one of the homes what she liked about the residence. “She told me she just really enjoyed the fried eggs she had for breakfast every morning.”

Unlike basic residences where rules don’t allow much flexibility, “So giving people choice in what they want to do from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed – that’s what our model of care is all about.”

“Providence is leading the way for British Columbia, and we’re definitely, I think, going to be leaders in Canada.”

In the introductory ground awakening by Sulksun (Shane Pointe), a Musqueam knowledge keeper and Coast Salish cultural leader, remarks by his nephews Calvin and Victor Guerin, and the blessing by Archbishop Smith, tribute was paid to the importance of providence.

“Before I start, it’s important for you to know that I absolutely adore and respect the word Providence,” said Sulksun:

Providence is an amazing word to me; it’s huge to me. And it’s represented here right now. Our really wonderful and good friend is here representing a structured belief system, which is one part of Providence. I’ve been blessed today in being invited to do ceremony, which is secular. These two beautiful ways of being are wrapped up in the word Providence.

Likewise, Archbishop Smith related being asked by schoolchildren what his favourite Gospel passage was. “One of my favourites is the passage in Matthew, end of Chapter 6, where Jesus talks about the Providence of God.”

Amid his disciples’ fear, he assures them they are worth more than the flowers and birds and God will look after them.

“God provides, God is Providence, God is providential,” he said.

By blessing the land of the future residence . . .

. . . we are giving it over to God’s use through our hands, putting God first. In so doing, trusting that God is providential, that God will provide, and so as the people of faith today, as we bless this land, we do look forward to the many, many gifts God in his Providence will be pouring out, gushing out upon us his people as we strive in the name of Jesus in continuity with the mission, participation in the ministry of Jesus to heal.

Paul Schratz is Editor of The B.C. Catholic and Editorial & Outreach Manager for Canadian Catholic News. This article first appeared in The B.C. Catholic and is re-posted by permission.