Dozens of men stand in the rising shell of what will soon be the new Ottawa Civic Hospital. The year is 1922. The world has just emerged from a war and an influenza pandemic, and never has the argument for a better healthcare system been stronger.
An Ottawa Citizen article from 1921 captures those sentiments in the words of Patrick Green, an organizer with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners: “We wish to place ourselves on record as favouring the immediate construction of the new Civic Hospital. The necessity of having such an institution cannot be denied.”
Fast forward 100 years and we find ourselves once again in the wake of a pandemic and with a new hospital on the horizon. This time, it’s the words of Richard Hayter, with the Eastern Ontario Western Quebec Unionized Building and Construction Trades Council, that resonate: “Our members have a sense of pride in building the new hospital campus to make sure our families and the people we serve in this region have the world-class healthcare system we deserve for another 100 years or more.”
Hayter says that over the course of a century, the members of the Trades Council have participated in more than two dozen major restorations or expansions to the Civic, moving it into the 21st century, and then into the digital age. Much has changed in that time in terms of the skills, training, and equipment needed to build our new campus. For instance, with a far more inclusive membership, they are considering a daycare at the site of the new hospital project to better accommodate the 1,000 or more workers who will be on-site every day. What hasn’t changed though, Hayter says, is that same sense of pride.
“In a few years from now, our members will be able to point to this incredible healthcare project and proudly say, “We did that.”
