While writing the column that you are currently reading, I have spent countless hours sitting within view of Red Oak Villa and what remains of the old St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the downtown with the noise of the cars and motorcycles, it is amazing to imagine what it was like when St. Joseph’s Hospital dominated the skyline north of Elm Street perched on “Mount St. Joseph.”
This is a place that contains many memories both good and bad; births, deaths, sicknesses and cures, all life changing in their own ways. Let us now delve into the memories shared with us by you the readers.
The first comment left by the vast majority of readers was that they were born at St. Joseph’s. Unfortunately, for the purpose of this column, I can’t consider that a memory per se (sorry) and of course if that was the only memory sent our way this column would be rather short. However, I can say for a fact that based on tallying all of those particular comments (plus
those left on photos of old St. Joseph’s Hospital posted on the “Sudbury Then and Now” Facebook page) at least 400 people were born there over the years.
So, as Roger Brugess commented (rather cheekily) “I was born there…but don’t remember much having been born at such a young age.”
Unfortunately, I have never seen the inside of St. Joseph’s (even as a newborn) as I was born five years too late. But, my imagination of the sights and sounds, the “feel” if you will, of the Hospital was confirmed by one reader, Jane Gupta Deering, who commented that “Every time I watch "The Godfather" the hospital scene reminds me of this hospital.”
A person’s memories can also be tied to the other senses that we experience and I can imagine that the familiar mid-20th century “hospital smell” would bring some former patients back in time immediately. As reader Mike Derks recalls: “The smell of antiseptic would whomp you right in the face as you walked in the front doors.”
And, of course, hospitals can definitely be a scary place for many, certain areas specifically. Geoffrey Lee wrote that the “area at the back, where the ambulances arrived, was a dark and eerie place.”
Diane B. Rogers, having worked in the hospital, has many memories of the building, however, the one that sticks out the most was that she “hated having to walk past the morgue to go to the cafeteria.”
Claude Mailloux has particular memories of one staff member, not a nurse or a doctor, but a security guard. He states that he “remember(s) back in the late 50s and early 60s, the parking lot security guard would prevent (the children) from crossing the parking lot on our way to school, of course we would dash across and he would catch us.”
Frequent contributor Chris Derro shared with us a little-known fact about a decorative feature of the building that did not survive construction at the site. He writes: “When major renovations began, workers were moving that statue of St. Joseph holding Jesus from its perch high above the entrance and dropped it. It shattered and was lost. It is NOT the same statue that
appeared in front of The Sudbury General/St. Joseph's; that one is still intact and was moved to the Seniors' Villa near Laurentian University where it's now displayed at the front of the building.”
Unfortunately, as with some 19th century buildings that may not have been kept structurally sound over time, the ravages of age took hold and as another prolific contributor at “Sudbury Then and Now,” Geoffrey Lee, noted (not so eloquently), “Towards its end, it was a crummy dump.”
Sudbury Then and Now member Fred Sigurdson had a very memorable 10th Birthday residing at St. Joseph’s as he “spent a month and a half in the children's ward there in 1966 with a month and a week of it in isolation.”
He also “remember(s) that my window had bars on it, made me feel like I was in jail.”
That very same year, reader Sandy Grant was treated there (the same hospital where she was born) for double pneumonia at five years old.
She states that her memories are that the “doctors and nurses gave me excellent care (during her) three weeks in hospital.”
These two readers were not the only ones to spend a disproportionate amount of their youth at St. Joseph’s, there have been many others who, like reader Robert Flintoff, were “there so many times, (they) called St. Joes (their) second home.”
Unfortunately, as is always the case, not everyone has great memories of their (or their loved ones) hospital visits. Two readers shared similar experiences that their mothers had while at the hospital giving birth to them.
Hope Stevenson wrote that when she was born “(her) mom gave birth to (her) silently as the nuns were yelling at other mothers to be quiet” which caused her to be afraid of similar treatment. Susan Russell-Hamilton wrote that her mother told her “that the Nuns were really mean…(to) some women in labour to shut them up.”
One of our readers, Lynette Burton, commented of her memory of what is now considered an extremely archaic “privilege” from a bygone era, “you could (smoke) in your room” to which another member added that the doctor and nurse probably would have joined you. (I don’t know about you but I can just smell the nicotine wafting off of that memory)
Another occurrence that remains solely in that bygone era was shared by Susan Darling, who wrote: “My sister and I were born there. Our parents lived 'far away' in Whitefish, and the doctor had (her) mom admitted to St. Joseph's two weeks before her due date to be induced both times … in case there was not (enough) time to travel to the city once labour started.”
Over the years, more than a few former patients became employees of the Hospital (who would’ve thought?). Lynn Scott Gainer’s reminiscences perfectly encapsulate for us the life that these former patients who are now on the other side of the capping ceremony (it is a veritable Coles Notes of mid-20th century Sudbury nursing schooling, if you will).
“I was born in St Joseph’s (in 1948) and went into nurses training there in 1968 (at) St. Elizabeth School of Nursing, graduating in 1970 (by then the school had been taken over by Cambrian College). As students we lived in the residence at the back (that large building still in existence to the east of Red Oak) chaperoned by the nuns…In winter we accessed the hospital in our uniforms by walking through the long underground tunnel.” (Don’t forget that tunnel, we’ll come back down to it later).
Nursing students toiled regularly in the hospital but the compensation was modest. "In the first year there was no money, in the second year we got $4 a month, and in the third year it was $6 a month — just enough for the nylons," was what Jeannine Larcher-Lalande (a 1954 graduate) told the Sudbury Star in a 2016 interview.
In all, at least a dozen former patients commented that at some point after their stay, they returned to the Hospital in capacities as differing as nurse, X-Ray technician, and switchboard operator or in Dan Bedard’s case: “I worked there in 1969 for 3 days when I turned 16, as a kitchen helper. That was enough for me.”
Christina Moore was quite enamoured with St. Joseph’s as she wrote that she “used to love visiting my mom's aunt there… (she was a) Grey nun (who) worked in the nursery.” That same feeling of affection for the Hospital and its staff is echoed in a comment by Kuljeet Buttoo who “always found the hospital to have very calm environment. A great team of doctors, and nurses…”
Marc Pleau, referencing his mother’s time at St. Joseph’s, reminds us how the working world has changed (insofar as age of commencing) since his “mother started her hospital career here, at the age of 12 (and) was full-time by 14. Working under the leadership of the Nuns.”
Colette Godon-Proulx also worked there during her youth as a candy striper in 1967. She recalls that it was “not at all like today's hospitals.”
Sharron Maskevich concurs with this assessment stating that “it was very archaic…Florence Nightingale (the 19th century British pioneer of modern nursing) probably worked in similar settings.”
Of course, as with the patient experience, the observations of former nurses also differed widely amongst our commenters. Judy Chaperon, who graduated from the Sudbury Regional School of Nursing in 1973 and had her first position as an RN on F floor (Men’s and women’s medical-surgical unit) called working at St. Joseph’s a “great experience (where) we gave good patient care.”
As mentioned in the previous article, St. Joseph’s closed its doors for good in 1975. Two of our article responses came from nurses who just caught on at St. Joseph’s as it reached its terminus. Shelley Hrycay “worked on (the) men's ward when (she) first graduated from nursing in 1974. It then closed the following year when Laurentian hospital opened.” And, Roseanna
Chevrier-Sweet holds the distinction of being among those who “worked the last shift (at St. Joseph’s) and the first one at the new Laurentian Hospital.”
Remember those tunnels that Lynn Scott Gainer mentioned earlier? They re-entered the public’s consciousness during a zoning meeting in January 2016 where the expansion of Red Oak Villa, a six-storey addition next to the sole remaining wing of the original St. Joseph's Hospital, was up for approval.
Councillor Joscelyne Landry-Altmann expressed to the project backers, Autumnwood, that, “There's one thing you didn't talk about, and that's the tunnel that exists between St. Joseph's Hospital and the diocese building.”
She continued that “there are numerous stories that have come out of that, especially from the nurses that lived in the residence and would use the tunnel to go to the hospital.”
In fact, at that time two underground passageways still existed. One running to the old boiler plant (with chimney) behind the hospital, and the other (as Councillor Landry-Altmann stated) to the former nursing school.
Not long after this, Landry-Altmann and members of the city's heritage advisory panel took in a tour of those remaining tunnels. Marc Pleau, as a member of that panel, “was one of the last people to walk the tunnel...before it was demolished.” He elaborated that it “was a finely
(brown-) bricked tunnel.”
Once the tunnels were removed and the Red Oak Villa expansion proceeded, only one, unused, portion of the old Hospital building remained.
The chimney stack of the central heating plant had been in existence near the location of the main library building (pre-dating it in fact) since the late 1920s. It hadn't been used in nearly three decades. On June 7, 2017, the stack was demolished and with it another piece of Sudbury's health care history was gone.
I would like to end this column with one last memory, a voice from the past, Kaireen Crichton (founder of the Blue Door Soup Kitchen) who passed away in June 2021. She commented on a previous post of a photo of St. Joseph’s Hospital at Sudbury Then and Now, “(it) is now the Red Oak Villa, a lovely retirement home (and) I live there. But I was also born here over 95 years ago. My aunt, Dr. Faustina Kelly-Cook practiced medicine here. Lots of history in this old building!”
Lots of history indeed….and lots of memories too.
Well, dear readers, we’ve completed our rounds and felt the pulse of your memories of this grand institution. Now that visiting hours are over it’s time to bring this month’s stroll down Memory Lane to a close. Thank you to everyone who shared their memories of St. Joseph’s Hospital. We’ll see you again in two weeks with another timely topic.
Jason Marcon is a writer and history enthusiast in Greater Sudbury. He runs the Coniston Historical Group and the Sudbury Then and Now Facebook page. Memory Lane is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
