Boy have these volunteers been faithful to the hospice cause

Leo Glavine, left, Diana Patterson and NSHA CEO Janet Knox

A freestanding hospice for the Annapolis Valley has been such a long nurtured vision. Today this dream is finally being realized.

We know this because ground was broken Oct. 26 on a tree-filled hilltop on the Valley Regional Hospital grounds in Kentville. Cheers from about 75 people ruffled the fall air.

Long time chair Diana Patterson was grinning ear-to-ear, filled with joy.

“It’s almost, ‘pinch me, it’s finally happening,’ because we’ve worked so hard, and everybody here has a connection to it,” she said.

Former health minister and Kings West MLA Leo Glavine said, “The story is the unbelievable, unwavering commitment that this would become a reality at some point.”

Prior to the speeches and shovel lifting, Glavine told me, “the ‘back story’ isn’t important today.” True, but his statement gave me pause because he and I had spoken so many times about hospice.

The ‘back story’ is important to many, including the angels hovering overhead last week. I was happy that Wayne Woodman and his wife, Jill, arranged for Dorothy Perkin to attend. Her husband, Dr. Jim Perkin, was one of the angels who hoped to be around for the sod turning. Canon Sid Davies was another.

The dream of a Valley hospice began percolating 25 years ago thanks to VON staff and Dr. Jeanette Auger, who taught the sociology of grief at Acadia University.

The first formal study of a potential hospice was released in 1997. It was entitled Mind, Body and Soul: Exploring the Need for a Hospice in Kings County.

A hospice foundation was formed in 2000. My Dad signed on at the beginning. Later he told me he was motivated by the memory of his mother’s painful death.

Canon Sid Davies at 100

In 2002, Canon Davies toured hospices in Australia and England where he learned, “practically every community of any size has at least one hospice.”

At his 100^th birthday party, the good Canon said he hoped to live long enough to see the hospice constructed. Since he passed on a year later in 2013,   Canon Sid is another angel.

In 2003 then provincial health minister Jane Purves wrote, “we recognize there is a need for improved palliative care service in Annapolis Valley health. The evidence shows there is a need, the people of your district expect this service, and the health professionals and volunteers of the district have shown an unparalleled commitment to delivering it.”

A year later Dr. Perkin, who was chairman, and board member Alex Colville went to Halifax to stage a silent protest in the gallery of the Legislature. NDP MLA David Wilson, a former paramedic, spoke for them in the house that May day, questioning the delays and lack of recognition.

“This community-driven organization came to government with a plan based on a 300-page needs assessment, a plan to build, to furnish, to equip a 10-bed free-standing hospice and turn it over to the province on condition that operating costs would largely be met with public funds,” Wilson said.

At the time, 14 years ago, Colville, our renowned artist, said of John Hamm’s government, “they are all stalling as if they’d never heard of a hospice… in this case the government is failing the people.”

Retired physician Arthur Grebneff of Wolfville told the next hospice foundation AGM that palliative care not being a sexy topic is a key problem.

Lions turning over a big cheque

In 2005 the Annapolis Valley Hospice Foundation and Annapolis Valley Health came together to explore their common visions. They decided to raise $8 million and they did.

“The average life expectancy and the average age in the Annapolis Valley is higher than national and provincial averages, meaning that there is a greater need for health services such as end-of-life care than in other parts of the province and country,” district palliative care manager Shelagh Campbell-Palmer stated.

In 2008 the Rotary Clubs of Kentville, Middleton, New Minas and Wolfville launched the Annapolis Valley Rotary Giving Campaign with the hospice cause part of that exercise.

Design full of light and spirit

Architect Bengie Nycum

From above the hospice will have the appearance of a bird sitting on a nest, according to architect Bengie Nycum.

The Halifax-based architect got an interest in health care design from his father, but he developed a passion after his mother died in 2012.

Nycum, who was on hand for the sod turning, said in a talk he gave earlier this year that his first priority was to design a place of light and spirit. He explained that to make the 10 rooms larger he had to reduce other spaces.

A typical nursing home room in this province is 190 square feet, but Nycum wanted each hospice room to be 220 square feet to allow for family stays.

“No one will every know how hard I had to fight. It was a tough sell,” Nycum said of the resulting reduction in clinical space.

He terms the Valley Regional Hospital property “a splendid site let me tell you. It’s near the (Cornwallis) river, so there’s that flow and continuity of life.”

Nycum suggests the hospice will sit on a knoll like a bird on a nest. He added that because it isn’t attached to the hospital he could specify less concrete and more wood.

In designing the new hospice, he said, his hope is that the building invites patients to “come be in our nest, return to the nest and have a sense that this is a place where we’re going to be there for you, taking care of ten souls who are parting.”

The architect praised dedicated hospice foundation volunteers, Don Wells, Kathryne Phillips and Diana Patterson, and palliative care staff.

The hospice is being built by the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) with the funds already raised in the Valley community. Once built, the province will staff, operate and maintain the hospice. This I’m told is unlike the current hospice project in Halifax where a portion of the operating funds will still need to be raised.

Palliative patients are lodged in the medical unit now. Staff do their best to provide quality care, but the hospice will have a more home-like setting, supporting medical patients across the district.

According to long time foundation member Brenda Wallace-Allen, the aim of the hospice movement is to broker another way to support people in dying. That means outside of busy, loud hospital units. That means a place where questions are answered and the quality of life remaining is paramount.

The Valley hospice time line was way too long. I will close by repeating that the means in which the terminally ill are eased into death begins with a society that cares.

Staying the course is the term Patterson used six years ago to describe the process the foundation has undergone. Boy, have these volunteers been faithful to the cause.