CORNWALL, Ontario – From 1897 to 1969, Registered Nurses and Registered Nurse Assistants were trained in the Cornwall General Hospital.
In 2004, the Cornwall General Hospital (CGH) closed and was amalgamated with the Hotel Dieu Hospital into the new Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH).
Services slowly wound down at CGH and the building became empty for several years until developers Matt Cinnamon and Dan Orr bought the property and transformed it into the Care Centre. The Care Centre is a senior’s residence that currently has 30 members.
Now Cinnamon and Orr are offering to help members of the Cornwall General Hospital Nurses Alumni Association commemorate their history at the hospital.
The Association and the Cornwall Community Museum will be decorating two hallways with class pictures and memorabilia from the nurse’s program with the consent of Cinnamon and Orr.
The class pictures for all of the Registered Nurses and all of the Registered Nurses Assistants have been taken out of storage and put into three large frames that will adorn the hallways. Also included will be a list of donors to the program, old photos of the hospital and other items provided by the Cornwall Community Museum.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, every hospital had their own nursing education program. The first nurses to graduate from the program at the CGH graduated in 1901. The last class of Registered Nurses at the Cornwall General Hospital graduated in 1969, after which the program was replaced by the Registered Nurses Assistant program.
“It was a wonderful hospital,” said Catherine Poirier, President of the Cornwall General Hospital Nurses Alumni Association. “They were very very good to us. We worked for the hospital, they looked out for us. The food was free, our uniforms were free, it was a great education for very little money.”
Don Smith, Manager/ Associate Curator of the Cornwall Community Museum said that this is an opportunity to remember one of Cornwall’s original hospitals.
“This can be a true representation of a historical aspect of our community,” he said.
He pointed out that the Hotel Dieu Hospital, which also opened in 1897 and was consolidated with the Cornwall General to form the CCH, already has a commemoration for their nurse’s program at the Hotel Dieu’s original site, which is now St. Joseph’s Continuing Care Centre.
“The vision of our group is that this is not a memorial, but a place of honour,” said Sharon Porter, a member of the last Registered Nurse class at the CGH.
