Yes, it's been 25 years since St. Joseph's and Civic Hospital merged.
St. Joseph's General Hospital was officially opened on October 7, 1931 with 90 beds. and a cost of $350,000.
According to the North Bay Hospitals Heritage Site Plaque, The first hospital to break ground in North Bay was the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital, opened in 1904 by the Victorian Order of Nurses as a small, 20-bed “cottage hospital”, located at the top of what is now Algonquin Avenue, then Klock Avenue after North Bay’s first MP. In 1905 the hospital became a training school for nurses – just in time to battle the typhoid epidemic. The hospital severed ties with the VON in 1924 and ran self-governed until 1931 when the city began running it as a Civic General Hospital.
In October of 1931 St. Joseph’s Hospital opened on McLaren to compensate for the small size of the Queen Victoria. St. Joseph’s expanded in 1948 and in 1951 a new Civic Hospital opened on Scollard Street. The Queen Victoria became a hotel in 1952 until it closed in 1961. The building was subsequently demolished in 1969. St. Joseph’s expanded to 250 beds in 1957 and Civic built a new wing in 1968.
On April 1st 1995 the two hospitals joined forces to serve the North Bay community in an effort to save costs and streamline services. A new, larger hospital had been approved by the province in 1984, but was not started until after the new millennium, finally opening on January 29th, 2011.
In 1995 St. Joseph’s General Hospital and the North Bay Civic Hospital consolidated to become the North Bay and District Hospital. St. Joseph’s and Civic were both were demolished in 2012.
The Great Canadian Catholic Hospital History Project by Thelma Patterson
Videographer Neil Brown whose children were both born in St. Joseph's, was kind enough to send us this video of St. Joseph's demolition.
