All About the Health Centre
The story of neighbours in the Pender Harbour area co-operating to provide their own health care began in 1929. In that year citizens volunteered their labour to build a hospital in Garden Bay. People came by boat from nearby bays, inlets and islands many hours away to work on their hospital. By August 1930, St. Mary's was ready under the auspices of the Anglican Church's Columbia Coast Mission to serve the community for three decades.
The Sunshine Coast population grew faster on the southern end of the peninsula and in 1964, after a short and bitter struggle, St. Mary's moved to a new building in Sechelt. Pender Harbour was promised a "modern clinic" in Madeira Park with minor surgical facilities and "an active qualified doctor". This never happened.
Jim and Vi Tyner who were the "parents" of the Health Centre.
The people of Pender Harbour, lead by Jim Tyner, petitioned the Ministry of Health and in 1971 had a public meeting with Ministry officials to voice their concerns about the inability of residents to easily access medical care. At that time it took a 2 1/2 hour ambulance ride to get to the hospital. They were promised a clinic that would make "medical history in BC". Their hard work and entreaties fell on deaf ears in Victoria and nothing happened again. So, a non-profit incorporated society was formed to build a clinic with hope that the Ministry of Health would come on board. They did not and the Pender Harbour & District Health Centre (PHHC) was built with volunteer labour, total community support and opened officially on December 8th 1976.
The vision of the original architect, Frederick Hollingsworth, was that the community would grow and the building would have to grow with it. Over the past 30 years two wings were added to provide dental services and laboratory services. The Board of Trustees realized that in order to attract visiting specialists sorely needed to provide health care to an aging population without public transportation to access health services on the lower end of the coast, the final wing of the Health Centre needed to be built. It was tendered early in 2006 and was completed for the 30th Anniversary on December 8, 2006. It is a state of the art facility and will attract many health care professionals to this area in the future.
The Pender Harbour & District Health Centre is unique in the province because of its autonomy. The Board of Trustees has entered into a contract with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority to provide Home Care Nursing, Laboratory and Ambulatory Care services but all community programs are funded through donations and rental income. The PHHC provides nursing and laboratory services on a 5 day a week basis. Space is rented out to other health care professionals including physicians, dentists, a physiotherapist, chiropractor, public health consultant, and various counseling professionals such as psychologists, mental health counselors and other health care professionals.
Community outreach and education programs are part of the mandate of the Health Centre and we are currently establishing a Continuing Diabetes Education Program to provide risk assessment and management of this chronic disease which is becoming almost epidemic in the entire country. A second plan is to establish a Women's Health Clinic as the female population of Pender Harbour has requested.