The Minden Hills Cultural Centre (MHCC) is wrapping up a new monthly speaker series designed to educate people about historical happenings in the Highlands.
Robert Wong, programming coordinator at MHCC, said the ‘community heritage series’ covered key topics over the summer. It kicked off May 23 with a presentation by Larry Ferguson, a long-time cottager and former Ontario Ministry of Health employee, on the history of healthcare in Haliburton County.
He covered the century from 1922, when the Wilberforce Red Cross Outpost – the first station of its kind in Canada – opened, to present-day, where services are delivered by Haliburton Highlands Health Services.
The early part of the 20th century was bleak for County residents, particularly those living outside urban hubs in Minden and Haliburton. Access to health care was limited. He noted there were local doctors – John Hutchinson practiced in the region in the early-to-mid 1800s; John McCrae in Haliburton from the late 1800s to early 1900s; and Wilfred Crowe and Agnes Jamieson in Minden from the early-to-mid 1900s.
Ferguson told how the Wilberforce outpost was established in February 1922 following the efforts of Alfred Schofield, an inspector for the Children’s Aid Society. He called for the Red Cross, located in Toronto, to send help after a young woman and five children died during a brutal winter.
The organization agreed – sending a nurse and medical supplies north. The Red Cross staffed the outpost until 1959.
Other outposts were set up in Haliburton in 1945 and Minden in 1955.
“They were all staffed by nurses who served with the Canadian military in the First [and Second] World Wars… they did some pretty incredible things,” Ferguson said, telling how nurses did everything from delivering babies to treating injuries, illnesses, and infections.
The Red Cross nurses also educated community members on identifying certain ailments and how to treat them. They also led literacy programs, with books at the outpost regularly loaned to locals. He said this is one of the first early examples of a library in the County.
Ferguson said after the Red Cross ceased operations in Minden and Haliburton in the 60s, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Peterborough started manning them as satellite locations, ensuring County residents still had access to care. The constant threat of service shutdowns through the 1980s and 1990s spurred the ‘Haliburton in Action’ movement that eventually led to the formation of HHHS in 1996.
There’s evidence of long-term care in the County dating back to 1966, when the Haliburton County Home for Senior Citizens opened. Today, the community is serviced by three homes – Hyland Crest in Minden, and Highland Wood and Extendicare in Haliburton.
Ferguson said he became interested in learning about the history of healthcare in the Highlands having visited the area frequently in recent years to visit a friend at Hyland Crest. He’s spent a couple of years researching and plans to publish a book.
“The working title is The Long Difficult Struggle to Build and Keep Health Care in Haliburton County. Be it ever so humble, Minden had an ER in 1955,” Ferguson said. “This is an important project for me – I always say if people don’t learn from history, they’re bound to repeat it.”
The next speaker event takes place at MHCC July 11, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and will feature Janet Trull, who will talk about the impact of the Victoria railway when it came to Haliburton in the 1870s.
