- by Patricia Chartier

As of August 6, Ontario public hospital Emergency Departments have been closed for 10,084.5 hours since the start of 2023.
In any other time in my life, these unending closures would have been treated as a this-can’t-be-real, hair-standing-on-end CRISIS; with the hapless Premier and Health Minister kept squirming miserably on the hot seat.

But in this weird and distracting era—perfect for assaults on all we hold dear—reports of rural ER closures feel incidental and bloodless, part of the endless thrum of bad news. Hey, what do you expect from Doug Ford?

Unless you live in one of the communities. These are largely clustered in rural southwestern Ontario, and in eastern Ontario near Carleton Place, for reasons we don’t understand. Muskoka hospitals, where Doug Ford and some of Ontario’s wealthiest vacation, remain unscathed by closures for reasons we likely DO understand.
But in bucolic farming communities like Durham, Wingham and Chesley, and historic Georgian Bay waterfront towns such as Thornbury and Meaford, and others including Minden that saw its ER abruptly closed for good in May, residents reel with worry this summer.

Put yourself in their shoes and you can guess what they’re thinking. ”What if I get chest pains?” “What if my baby, say, grabs something hot and gets scalded?” ”What if my spouse falls off the ladder?”

In short, what if something terrible happens and we race to the ER we have volunteered at and fundraised for all these years…and find it closed?
Now, I am part of a small, Toronto-based grassroots health-care advocacy group called Ghost Gurney. We formed last fall with the goal of giving voice to other Ontarians who are worried, angered and affected by the mismanagement of our public health-care system. We also track hospital and ER closures on a map. This map focused our own minds on the impact of the closures.

So in early August we headed off on our first out-of-town Gurney Journey. We loaded Gertrude (our heavy-as-lead gurney that we spray-painted white) into a borrowed F150 and drove to some of the hardest-hit areas in Ontario. There we connected with savvy residents who are fighting hard for their hospitals, and could use support from those who enjoy fully open hospitals and ERs…for now.

Here are a few of the things they shared…

● A woman suffered a haemorrhage at home after a colonoscopy and would likely have bled out had it happened a day later when the Durham ER was closed for the weekend.

● These rural areas skew older and residents are more likely to need emergency care. Winter weather is extreme and often closes roads without warning.

● SW Ontario is home to a huge Mennonite community whose members travel by horse and buggy. An extra 40 minute drive to the next ER would take them a day. ● A woman near Owen Sound heard on the radio about the closure of the maternal care clinic where she was due to give birth that very week.

● A woman’s infant survived meningitis in part because, she says, the Chesley ER was open and he was diagnosed and stabilized immediately before being transported to London.

● The local MPPs are missing in action while their constituents suffer. This will not be forgotten during the next election.

A quick side note to those who snort, they voted Conservative and this is what they got. What Ghost Gurney says is this: no one deserves to face dangerous, life-altering circumstances, no matter whom they voted for. Children can’t vote and their health is at risk here also. And these areas are also full of Ontarians who worked hard to unseat the Conservative incumbents but  were unsuccessful.

So let’s all put cynicism aside and focus our thoughts on what it would be like for us, as human beings with families and friends we love, to lose access to immediate ER attention.

And keep in mind that if we allow Ford to get away with this…who knows what he will do to us next?

Since returning from our Gurney Journey, something remarked by Ken Craig, Mayor of Kincardine, stays with us.

“Publicly-funded healthcare is the expression of an inclusive society. No one is left out, no one is left behind.”

Or as Ghost gurney puts it, we all matter or none of us do.

The author is a member of Toronto-based health care advocacy group The Ghost Gurney Project. Visit the group’s closure map at www.GhostGurney.ca Contact them at [email protected] Twitter @ghost_gurney TikTok/IG: @ghostgurney Facebook: The Ghost Gurney Project

To keep up to date locally, join Grey Bruce County Health Coalition or Chesley Hospital Community Support on Facebook.