Tunneling through Past and Present

On this second last day of my Regina vacation, I had opportunity to visit Regina General Hospital again ~ this time to accompany a friend on an errand. Each time I have returned this week, I have been looking for an old and dear friend. A friend who was with me at the beginning of my nursing career. I have pouted and fussed a bit about all the changes that have been wrought over the years but have not really spoken deeply to myself about what all the fuss was about.

We entered the hospital today from the St. John’s Street entrance, behind the hospital that I knew so well.  The lovely wing shown in this picture is to the right of that entrance and apparently has auditoriums housed inside. Down one of the myriad of halls are yellowed photographs of the hospital in it’s various incarnations.  Pointing to the Nurses Residence and the window of the room I shared in First Year Nursing in 1965-66, there were also sidewalks that curved down either side of a large lawn to the circular parking lot. I remembered walking down that sidewalk with my classmates in our uniforms or, if in our street clothes, meeting friends in the parking lot to go to the Crescent Tea Room for lunch, to the beach or just a walk downtown.

There was the DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) wing that housed 72 beds on one unit for our military veterans. It was the first floor of one of those units that I did my very first bed bath ~ on a man!  The DVA wing extended from the original hospital that was built in 1909 with solariums on each floor so patients could be taken to the sun while recovering. More wings sprouted from the other side of the old hospital, it's original entrance arch ensconced inside the present building. 

What the photographs couldn’t show was the tunnel from the Nurses Residence to the Hospital and the tunnel from the Hospital to the Munroe Wing ~ both closed and filled in.

My communication with these memories tunneling through feelings and old photographs opened a tiny ache in my heart. This random collection of bricks and mortar has changed the face of the hospital where young women trained for nursing careers. There has been an unintentional erasure of the lives of anyone who lived, learned and worked to develop a career. It has felt more like our pasts have been pushed out of being to accomodate our vehicles and our ever growing technology, with little honour for the past. I do know however, that inside the rearranged bricks and mortar blocks, health care of patients continues. Just with a few differences in the tools that are used and placement of buildings.

“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.”

~ Marcus Aurelius