Now, she fears that she won’t be able to die there.

In 2020, the inpatient beds were “temporarily” removed, and now, a sole emergency clinic remains which relies on locum doctors to operate.

The emergency room has also faced several closures since the summer.

A rally took place Wednesday at 2 p.m., drawing over 100 supporters who gathered at the Thessalon Hospital before marching to the Trans-Canada Highway with signs and a banner.

Michael Hurley from the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Al Dupuis, a representative for the Ontario Health Coalition from Blind River, spoke and the rally.

“It used to be a vibrant, fully equipped hospital,” Thompson told The Sault Star in an interview. “People had their babies here — if they were sick, they stayed in the hospital.”

Located one hour east of Sault Ste. Marie, the Thessalon Hospital is one of three in the North Shore Health Network (NSHN). Alongside the Blind River hospital and the Matthews Memorial Hospital Association in Richards Landing, it serves communities from Echo Bay to Spanish.

The NSHN operates one inpatient unit at the Blind River site and three emergency departments across its facilities, including Thessalon. Currently, Thessalon relies on locum doctors because it lacks permanent physician-based primary care.

Thompson, a lifelong Thessalon resident and retired teacher, said the hospital has been gradually stripped of its services.

“It just seems to be changing into an emergency clinic and a transfer site,” she said. “People aren’t able to just stay in the hospital for any longer length of time. If it’s an emergency, maybe 24 hours, but not even that.”

A major concern is end-of-life care. “People that had lived their whole life in Thessalon, when they came to the end of life, could not die in the Thessalon hospital,” Thompson said.

Her efforts to “fight back” against hospital cuts began last June. “I put up signs in my yard and around town that said, ‘Save our hospitals. We need to bring back the beds. We need to get doctors.’ But people were against me putting up signs, and they would take them down,” said Thompson.

With the help of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), Thompson got 600 signatures for a petition to bring the inpatient beds back to Thessalon.

On Feb. 8, a town-hall meeting was hosted by the Ontario Health Coalition to discuss health-care services within Thessalon, which was attended by more than 100 residents.

Natalie Mehra, executive director of the OHC and Hurley from CUPE spoke at the meeting.

“When I went to Thessalon last week, my core message was, and remains, that if each candidate for the election hears at every doorway a clear demand to restore the hospital services and to stop the closures, then they will have no choice but to make some firm commitments on it,” Mehra told The Sault Star in an interview.

Tim Vine, CEO for the NSHN, did not attend the rally.

“Personally, and as an organization … we absolutely support citizens’ rights to peacefully demonstrate and bring issues of concern to the public square and to policymakers,” said Vine. “But we are not connected or affiliated with the work that’s being done by the Ontario Health Coalition.”

The OHC has called the situation a crisis, pointing to systemic issues in Ontario’s healthcare system under Premier Doug Ford’s government.

“We don’t tell people how to vote. That’s not our role, but I think we’re using the strongest language we have ever used in this election, because the situation is the worst it has ever been,” said Mehra.

A release sent out by the OHC on Sunday states that Ford has not ended “hallway medicine” as he promised, but instead the number of patients waiting on stretchers in hallways has doubled.

It also states that the number of emergency department closures broke all records in 2024.

“You would think, if you had the worst staffing shortage that anyone has ever seen and emergency departments closing down all across the province, that the approach from the provincial government would be all boots on the ground,” said Mehra. “That did not happen.

“Instead, they actually held hospital funding well below the rate of inflation. That’s what economists call real dollar cut,” she said. “And only in the last two to three weeks of the financial year did they give the hospital funding increase, most of which was for retroactive wage increase because the court struck down their wage gaps.”

According to the OHC website, the Ford administration has tripled funding to for-profit clinics.

Grace Lee, Director of Media Relations to the Premier of Ontario, stated in an email to The Sault Star that the Liberals are the culprits for holding costs for healthcare low, and firing nurses, closing hospitals, and cutting medical spots.

“Our PC team has made record investments in our healthcare system, investing $85 billion this year alone while adding 100,000 new nurses, and 15,000 new doctors and getting shovels in the ground for over 50 hospital redevelopment projects, building on the 3,500 new beds we have added across the province since 2018, more beds than the Liberals built in over 10 years,” stated Lee. “At North Shore Health Network, which includes Thessalon, our PC team has increased funding by nearly $7 million since 2018.”

She also claimed that $44 million was earmarked for emergency department wait times and $10 million to train nurses for the emergency room.

Lee stated that the PC administration “added a record 100,000 new nurses and 15,000 new doctors to our workforce since 2018. Together, these investments have improved reduced hours in hospitals by 84 per cent.”

The press release from the OHC warns that Ontario’s public health system cannot take another four years of Ford’s administration

Mehra said she would like to see a standard set by the provincial government to define what a hospital is. “And then the hospital leadership would respond and say, ‘Well, if that’s the standard, this is what we need to do it. We need this much money, and we need this much support,’ and then the province would have to negotiate with them and come up with a solution”

Mehra said that Vine has been instrumental in getting locum funding secured. “But that is, you know, at best, a Band-Aid. A permanent solution would rely on a significant bump up in hospital funding,” she said, adding that stable, multi-year funding would allow hospitals to hire permanent, local staff, including nurses and support staff, not just physicians.

Vine told The Sault Star that staffing challenges in Thessalon are compounded by its geography and limited local resources. “Thessalon is the farthest from an airport and has the shortest track record with fewer local providers (tied with Richards Landing),” he said. Unlike Richards Landing, which benefits from a well-developed network of locums, and Blind River, which benefits from an alternative funding arrangement (AFA), which provides access to a larger pool of physicians, Thessalon struggles to attract consistent coverage.

“We are not in a position to be able to review their reopening for reasons of health, human resources, of physical space and flow, due to the increase in volumes that we’ve seen at that site,” said Vine.

“The emergency site remains open and has only suffered temporary closures because of the lack of physician and health human resources, despite provincial programs to assist with locums.”

While the NSHN has a recruiter, who attends medical schools, recruitment fairs and physician conferences, Vine said the main issue is the burdensome responsibility of rural physicians to “be all things to all people at all times.”

“The Thessalon Hospital is obviously the most at risk among the hospitals along the North Shore, but it impacts everybody,” said Mehra, noting the overflow of Thessalon patients in the surrounding hospitals.

Vine said these issues stem from systemic funding and policy decisions at the provincial level. “This has nothing to do with the North Shore Health Network. This has to do with the decisions that have been made by the Ministry of Health,” he said.

Vine called for more equitable funding and enhanced locum support to secure sustainable, permanent staffing across all sites.

Thompson said the issue with locums is the “consistency of care.” She shared a story of her friend, diagnosed with cancer, who saw 17 different locums at the Thessalon clinic over a two-year period.

“And she said it was a roller coaster,” said Thompson, noting that locums sometimes have different medical opinions.

While Vine said that the NSHN and the OHC share broad concerns about the stability and sustainability of health care in the province, he doesn’t believe it is the role of a public hospital to support protests.

Vine said he is happy that health care is at the forefront of the election in a way that it hadn’t in 2022.

“I think right now, Ontarians have the opportunity to have their voices heard at the ballot box in terms of what the future of healthcare for Ontario looks like,” he added. “And I would really encourage them to pay close attention to what is being said by various political leaders and political parties and make the best-informed choice they can for the future of healthcare.”

He also mentioned that protests could backfire for the community. “They may have perverse effects in terms of scaring off health and human resources that we’re desperately trying to attract, as people may see this as a controversial community in which to practise or to come and live and work,” said Vine.

“It’s just a kind of valiant effort to try and make this a key issue in the election,” Mehra said. “Because the community desperately needs some concrete commitments from all of the political parties that were they to win the election, they would restore the hospital services and stop the closures. So, we’re taking to the highway to make it as visible as possible.”

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