Campaign to build Haldimand-Norfolk’s first hospice gets $100,000 boost

Jerry Vink stopped short of throwing down the gauntlet.

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But the grand knight of the Knights of Columbus in Simcoe — a service club affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church — did urge fellow community organizations to fall in with the knights and support the quest to build Haldimand-Norfolk’s first bricks-and-mortar hospice.

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“It’s important,” Vink said recently while presenting a check for $100,000 to representatives of the Norfolk Haldimand Community Hospice, a citizens’ committee that has spent the past four years laying the groundwork for a 10-bed hospice to serve the two rural counties.

Vink’s eyes were opened to the reality of hospice care during a visit to Stedman Community Hospice in Brantford, one of the nearby hospices — along with Dr. Bob Kemp Hospice in Hamilton — where Haldimand-Norfolk residents currently access end-of-life care.

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“It was almost like they were kings and queens in there,” Vink said. “To me, personally, I feel the hospice is dying with dignity.”

The knights raised the $100,000 through the recent sale of their building on Kent Street in Simcoe.

“Not every organization can give that kind of money in one shot like that,” Vink said. “But we’re hoping they all contribute. That’s the big factor.”

The donation is earmarked for the building fund — once the hospice board gets the go-ahead about where to build.

The group has been offered two parcels of donated land for the proposed 16,000-square-foot facility — one property in Haldimand and the other in Norfolk, and both centrally located, according to the board.

Both municipalities have been “very helpful” during the land evaluation process, said Michael Godelie, a registered nurse who works in hospice care and chairs the hospice board.

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But the complexities of negotiations involving the province have delayed site approval and groundbreaking until late next year at the earliest.

“There’s red tape, there are government processes we have to go through, and that’s really what’s holding us up — just waiting for those pieces to fall into place,” Godelie said.

As the committee waits for word, what was an estimated $11-million project in 2022 has ballooned to over $15 million thanks to inflation and rising construction costs.

“The first piece of land that works for the hospice, that’s where we’re going to build,” Godelie said. “It’s a race between the counties.”

With Haldimand-Norfolk’s aging population expected to swell over the next few decades, Godelie is confident the hospice will become an essential part of the local health-care system.

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“There’s going to be a big need,” he said.

In the meantime, the committee offers free bereavement counseling and support services out of a satellite office in Port Dover. Members also make presentations about hospice care to long-term care homes, churches, schools and community agencies.

As hospice board member Shannon Porter put it after Monday’s check presentation, “We do have a working hospice. We just don’t have a building to work out of yet.”

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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