How difficult it is to care for your spouse who only has a few weeks left to live, and then to have him sent to a hospice bed a ferry ride away because there is no such thing here on the Sunshine Coast.
It was this very situation that sparked a small but intrepid group to find a better solution for our coastal community 30 years ago. It was untenable to think that a person could not access appropriate palliative care here. And so, in 1987, after two years of research and workshops and visits to communities on the Lower Mainland, the first group of hospice volunteers was trained.
Founder Rosemary Hoare, who took a keen interest in Hospice until her death last summer, coordinated those first volunteers along with Heather Blackwood. They drove up and down the Coast, meeting folks in their homes, listening to their concerns, and choosing volunteers who could companion them in their end-of-life journey.
Their first brochure was funded by Heather’s son who collected beer and pop cans around Trout Lake that summer. Money was non-existent, but Martha Scales, who worked for the Home Care Society, provided them with a desk and access to phones and a photocopier in her office.
Within a few years, the hospital agreed to dedicate two rooms to palliative care, which were furnished by the St. Mary’s Hospital Women’s Auxiliary.
As the turn of the century was approaching, a group led by the Rotary was keen on building a free-standing hospice as a millennium project. This group banded together with the Hospice volunteers to become the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society registered charity. However, without the support of the B.C. government and the health authority to pay nursing staff salaries, it was impossible to move forward on the dream of a free-standing hospice.
In 2001, when the second floor of St. Mary’s was closed, Coast Hospice raised enough money to host two hospice rooms at the Gibsons Garden Inn. In 2005, three rooms were renovated at Shorncliffe to create two hospice guest rooms and an adjoining family room. Throughout the years since, Coast Hospice has provided the furnishings and renovations, while Vancouver Coastal Health provides the staffing.
In 2016, Coast Hospice supported 24 people in our hospice rooms and 40 more who died in the hospital, at home or in residential care. But there were 28 people on the Hospice Room waitlist who could not access these rooms as they were occupied. Our 75 trained volunteers gave 7,340 hours last year to support about 100 community members each month, who were nearing the end of life or grieving the loss of someone.
Coast Hospice is celebrating this 30-year Legacy of Love with a community forum exploring the practices supporting end of life in the First Nations and non-First Nations communities on June 22, a gala concert featuring Shane Koyczan on Sept. 16 and a day of interactive workshops on Sept. 23. More information about these events can be found at www.coasthospice.com.
– Submitted by Bernadette Richards
