Hundreds of residents, concerned about the recent closure of the Tumbler Ridge emergency department evenings and weekends, turned out for a rally before a meeting with Northern Health Officials on Sunday, September 7.
Signs were held and slogans chanted as person after person spoke to the fall-out around the closure.
Town councillor Chris Norbury, who helped organize the rally along with fellow Councillor Nicole Noksana, acted as MC and main speaker of the day.
He says the closure is more than an inconvenience, it’s dangerous. “Life-threatening change puts every single one of us at risk,” he says. “Emergencies don’t wait for business hours. Heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, allergic reactions…these things don’t schedule themselves between 9 and 5. We are here today to say loud and clear, our community deserves better. Our lives and the lives of our families matter. No one should be forced to drive hours in the middle of the night—half the year through snow and ice—hoping to reach care in time.
He says the rally is not a protest, it’s about showing unity. “It’s about standing shoulder to shoulder, showing we will not accept being left behind. Together we are sending a message, our voices will be heard, and our emergency room must remain open when we need it most. Thank you for standing up for our town, for our families, and our future. Let’s raise our voices today and make sure decision makers understand, we will not accept this change and we will not back down.”
Mayor Krakowka was visibly angy as he spoke. He says he’s worried about what’s going to happen. “It’s Tumbler Ridge today, who’s it going to be tomorrow? Is it going to be Chetwynd? Is it going to be Hudson’s Hope? Is it going to be Valemont? We cannot allow Northern Health to not have our emergency department open for our residents. We have a mine in our community. We have seniors in our community. We cannot have our family members leaving our community. We cannot let that happen. We want our family to stay here. We need the health care centre open at night. We have great nurses, we have great doctors, lab techs, x-ray techs. This is nothing against them. We stand by those people. Those are the people that keep us here. We will always stand with our doctors and our nurses and our medical staff. It’s very, very important to have them here, and we thank them for being here.
But we cannot let Northern Health shut our ER down. We have to stand together.”
He says while he is angry about this, and he knows others are angry, too, he cautions against violence and outbursts. “there’s been some comments on Facebook: “punch him in the nose. Let’s see if the clinic can help them out. We don’t want any violence here at all. This is a rally, not a protest. Please, do your chants. When we get inside, ask your questions. But let’s not be screaming and yelling and using abusive language. Children are going to be attending this as well. So let’s be respectful. I’m not supportive of Northern Health closing down ERs, but to hear from them, we need to be calm and let them talk. Thank you.”
Norbury says it’s not council who is making these decisions. It’s not Mayor Krakowka or Dr Helm. “It’s somebody who doesn’t live in this community,” he says. “It’s people from Prince George that are making this decision on our behalf. Have they talked to us? No! They’re here today to tell us why they’re making this choice. They’re not asking us if this change is good enough for us. They’re coming to tell us. And we need to give them the message, as calmly as we can, because I know we’re upset, that this is not okay. This does not fit our need for health care.
“The golden hour is critical when we have an emergency event. If you or a loved one has a heart attack, chances are it will be between 4 and 6 am. That’s the most common time for heart attacks. How long will it take you to get to Chetwynd or Dawson Creek? How long will it take for the emergency paramedics to get from your house to Dawson Creek? Those paramedics will do the best job they absolutely can to get to you, to stabilize you and get you to Chetwynd, or Dawson Creek or Fort St. John. But Northern Health has not given them the tools to do it to save our lives. This is not about our nurses, our doctors, our paramedics. It’s about Northern Health’s choices. Our health care professionals are doing the best that they can with what they have been given. And they haven’t been given enough. We haven’t been given enough.”
He says this will affect every aspect of our lives as we know here in Tumbler Ridge. Not just life and death emergencies. “What’s going to happen to our sports in Tumbler Ridge? What’s going to happen to our kids’ sports when we don’t have access to a doctor or nurses on weekends? What happens if little John or little Jessica gets bumped a little too hard on the ice? And now we have to drive to Chetwynd or Dawson Creek. How much better would they have been if their concussion was dealt with in 10 minutes instead of an hour and a half? These are things I believe Northern Health knows, but they’re saying it’s okay. ‘We have data,’ they say, ‘we have information that says it’s okay. It’s okay for one of you to get hurt, to die, because the numbers say so.’ I don’t think so. Absolutely not.
Former head nurse Barb Schuerkamp is the next to speak. “I think it’s time for us to really get active and take a stand for our community,” she says. “There’s many factors here that we have to consider, and the emergency care and the golden hour and everything like that is really important. But there’s a lot of other factors as well, like how much risk are we putting our emergency health services people at when they have to go out of town for everything that they are required to go out of town for, even when the weather’s bad? What provisions are being made for those situations where it’s really unsafe to put that crew and the patient on the highway in the middle of the night for some reason that we could actually address here and prevent all that? And then there’s the factors such as you’re in some other community. How are you getting home? Maybe you’re one of those many people in our town that don’t drive? Who doesn’t have relatives or people that can come and get them. That’s another complication.
“So there’s lots of different reasons, but the golden hour, I think, is the main one that we really need to be concerned about. And I don’t know if any of you have ever spent any time in the back of an ambulance trying to look after somebody, but I can tell you, you can’t do much in there. You’re rolling, you’re rocking…you know what our roads are like out there. So really, how much care will be delivered? They’ll do what they can, but it’s extremely difficult when you’re being thrown around and you’re rolling around and you’re not even strapped in as a health care provider in the back of the ambulance.”
Gerald Noksana is the head of Tumbler Ridge Search and Rescue. He says this is going to add a lot more time to call-outs now. “In doing that, we’re also putting a lot more stress on our volunteers for Search and Rescue. Because where we have a call-out that might be a few hours, now we’ve got to add a few more hours to get our guys to Dawson Creek or Chetwynd, then back to Tumbler Ridge. We’re not only taking time away from our volunteers and their families, we’re putting additional stress on our volunteers, such as Search and Rescue. I can see the same for the firefighters having that additional stress. It’s not a simple thing. It’s going to add more work and it’s going to cost us more in the end.”
Norbury says that the local emergency providers—police officers and paramedics—can’t speak out at a rally like this. “We need to be their voices. We need to advocate to get them the tools and the resources to keep us safe and to take care of us. Police officers—when there is an instance of mental health issues or suicide—they need to follow that victim, that person, to their medical destination. We’re not just losing doctors and nurses during this time. We’re losing our police officers that keep us safe. This is an unintended consequence.
“Now, it’s not just if we have a heart attack. What if somebody breaks into our homes, destroys our property? We have one less person to protect us. That’s something we need to tell Northern Health.
Dave Thompson from Wolverine North Mountain Society says he is at the rally to represent all the outdoor users. “I’m here for all of the recreational people that love to use the outdoors on the weekends. We do the Emperor’s Challenge every year. This is not a low-risk activity. Some people get hurt when they climb a mountain. Another major thing that we do on weekends is we use chainsaws to clear our trails. These are volunteer activities. This is a high-risk activity. And we’re not professionals. We’re volunteers. So the chance of us getting hurt is probably higher than Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.
“And most people here probably do some activities on the weekends that are high-risk activities. What do we do? We’re out on a trail and could be up to an hour away from the trailhead working with chansaws. If somebody gets injured, if someone gets injured seriously, where do we go? We’re already an hour from town. The golden hour is almost up by the time we get to ER here. What happens if we have to go another hour? It could be devastating.”
Norbury says many people live in Tumbler Ridge because they love that closeness to nature. “We can’t let Northern Health take that away from us.
“I don’t know about all of you, but I was afraid this weekend,” he says. “I was afraid for my daughter. I was afraid for my wife. What happens if we get hurt, if we fall? Is that going to stop us from doing what we love, because we don’t have the ability to call a doctor or a nurse to save us?
“A gentleman died in our community yesterday. I’m not going to say who it was because I don’t want to use his name for our agenda, but he died. He was a friend of mine. Would his life have been saved if we had a doctor here in town and not in Dawson Creek because Northern Health took our doctor and asked them to keep Dawson Creek Hospital open? Is that going to be okay for someone you love? No, it’s not.”
The most impassioned speech of the day came from teacher Mark Deeley, but, he says, he was reluctant to speak. “When Chris asked me to speak on this last night, I actually said no originally. I’ve been advised to not speak on this, and I gave it a lot of thought. The people who are making these decisions have the same employers that I do. But the fact of the matter is that silence doesn’t help anyone but the people who are oppressing you. And if they’re taking your money and not giving you your services, they are oppressing you.
“The people who are making these decisions, did they sit down and talk to the man who spent his entire life taking care of our medical care, Dr. Helm? Did they speak to him about how to find a better solution than this? I don’t think they did, because I know that man, and he’d fight tooth and nail for us. Now let’s all be clear. I love this town, just like many of you. I came here 20 years ago. I raised my two boys. And the only reason those two boys survived is because of the excellent medical care we had. We’d go there for all sorts of things. My son got his thumb caught in the arena door. My other son broke his arm. And the moment we got to the clinic, we received good care. I’d be scared to move here now and raise my kids, knowing the emergency centre isn’t going to be open.
“We have children who play at night and on the weekend. We have a mine shift that goes on every night when that emergency room is not going to be open. We have people who are wilderness enthusiasts, not to mention the tourism we’re going to lose because of this. Businesses will close. People will move out. Young families will not come here because of this decision.
“Our town could die, but I got news for you. We have survived economic downturns. We have survived mine closures. We have survived evacuations from wildfires. And we will survive this, and we’ll survive it by pushing back. We will push back. We will do it in a good way. We are going to do it in a better way. We are going to do it in a way that the will of people will be heard. We will write letters. We will phone people. We will send videos. We will post things on Facebook. We will go to protests like this, and we will make sure that they hear us in Victoria and in Prince George that this is our money. This is our town. These are our families, and we are not giving it up.”
Councillor Keith Bertrand says council was absolutely blindsided by this decision. We were absolutely blindsided by this decision. “We do not accept it. We do not agree with it. And to see our doctors treating Tumbler Ridge patients in Dawson Creek right now, this weekend, is a slap in the face. I really hope this touches as much media as possible, because all of rural BC needs to know this is possible for their community as well. Yes, we have doctor shortages. Yes, we have nurses shortages. But we had a full staff here last year, happy to serve our community. Now we don’t, and there’s a reason for that. I feel everybody’s anxiety today, and believe me, I’m scared as well. I’m scared for my family. I’m scared for all of you. This is not acceptable.”
Kristen Holmlund says she grew up here. “I’m really devoted to this community.” She moved away, but returned when her parents got sick with cancer. “I’m terrified now. If this had happened when my parents were still sick, I don’t know what we could have done. When you’re going through chemo, you don’t have a lot of time to get to emergency if you have a fever, even just a little fever. And that’s the story of my parents. But there’s a lot of stories of other people in Tumbler Ridge, too. People who have chronic health conditions. People who have aging relatives or are aging. There’s a lot of people who can’t live here if we don’t have an ER. And they deserve to live here. Tumbler Ridge is for all of us. It’s not just for people who aren’t physically sick.”
The crowd then marched about the block and into the Community Centre to meet with Northern Health.
People looking to write to Northern Health can find a draft letter on Councillor Norbury’s Facebook Page. There is also a petition going around town and elsewhere in the Peace that you can sign; you can typically find the petition at Freshmart.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
