FERGUS – The original Groves Hospital which stood tall for decades on Union Street in Fergus is now just a memory, following its demolition, but locals had a chance to capture their own memory of the long standing institution.
The Groves Hospital Foundation held a fundraiser on Saturday where they could take home a brick from the former hospital for a donation at the site of the former hospital, which closed in 2020 and finished its tear down recently.
People came by with memories both recent and way in the past and walked away with a piece of local history.
Paul Deleonardis and Erin Longworth are fairly new to Fergus but their son Jake was born at the old hospital in 2019.
“This is where we started coming the last months of my pregnancy for prenatal care and having him born there and the hospital closed after that,” Longworth said.
Deleonardis also had family who worked at the hospital so it works as a tribute in that respect he added.
He wasn’t alone in having a connection with former staff. Carolyn Woods recalled her mother used to work occasionally as a nurse and would sometimes get pulled in herself back in the 1950s.
“They would be short staffed on holiday weekend and I remember Mrs. Stewart, she was a head nurse, she would call up my mom and ask if Carolyn could come help,” Woods said.
Linda Bennalick and her brother were both born at Old Groves, delivered by Dr. O’Brien.
“This is the hospital where I started volunteering,” Bennalick said. “The bricks in the future generation may not mean anything but for me and my brother, they are going to mean a lot.”
There were lots of ideas of what to do with the bricks themselves. One pair planned to build a shelf, Bennalick was going to get plaques made, Alana Gunn was going to have her daughter Edith — born at the hospital — paint one and do something creative with it, and Patrick McManus planned to put them up on his fireplace mantle.
McManus was born at the hospital in 1985, much like the majority of his family were.
“It’s just a sentimental thing more or less to have a piece of where I grew up,” he said. “My mom was in the hospital for three months before I was born, so my sister just spent her three months before I was born running up and down the halls.”
Lori Arsenault, Groves Hospital Foundation executive director, said a lot of people asked if the bricks would be available when they learned the hospital was going to be demolished.
“We thought it was an important opportunity that people can kind of say goodbye to Legacy Groves as we call it and to have a memento to remember the memories of having children here and all the things,” Arsenault said.
Arsenault added all proceeds raised from the brick donations would go towards equipment needs at the new hospital located in Aboyne at the Wellington Place campus.
