The Grenfell and District Pioneer Home has been the talk of the town ever since residents were given notice they may be forced to leave the seniors home.
“They figure the floors are going to give out anytime,” Shirley Gwilliam, an 84-year-old resident of the home said.
Gwilliam has lived in the town of Grenfell, Sask. her whole life. She has lived in pioneer long term care facility for five years.
She is one of 32 residents who were informed last week, that eight of them will have to leave.
“We’ve known for quite a while there’s damage down there,” she said.
The northeast wing will be closed indefinitely, due to significant structural damage. Authorities said it’s because of the foundation.
It is one of three wings that make up the facility.
The Regina Qu’aqppelle Health Region (RQHR) said the eight residents who have to transfer will be chosen on a volunteer basis, or will be decided depending on need.
Gwilliams said the transfer will affect her daily routine. She said when she heads to dinner, her table mates will be affected. She said people are nervous.
Gwilliams also said one man in the facility was unable to eat his breakfast the morning after the announcement out of fear.
“One woman’s (age is) 108. Two are 105, the other guy is 100, and the rest are all in their 90’s. I think the youngest is a young boy of 54-years-old,” she remembered.
RQHR said they’ve known about the damage for years. According to RQHR new residents were still being moved-in up until April and it was just a few weeks ago when they decided on the closure.
READ MORE: 8 Grenfell, Sask. senior care home residents to be relocated due to infrastructure damage
“It’s a wing that we had been watching. The floor had shifted a number of years ago,” Karen Earnshaw, Vice-President of integrated Health Services with RQHR said.
She added that engineers were regularly out doing an assessment on the damage. Earnshaw said visits dated back to 18 months ago, and the most recent was a final visit last month.
Earnshaw said on their most recent visit, engineers saw a significant shift in the foundation.
“The risk of it moving and or collapsing has increased to the point where we needed to empty out that wing,” Earnshaw explained.
Shirley’s son, Lloyd Gwilliam is the former mayor of Glenfell. He said they have been asking for a new home for years.
“I’ve been to the minister four or five times. It’s always the same thing. They have no money,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd says the procedure is for a community to raise a certain percentage and the province to fund the remaining. The small town rallied around the seniors raising $1.1 million in a series of fundraisers to help kick-start a brand new facility but were told the province couldn’t afford their end of the bargain at the time.
“The government calls the shots,” Lloyd said.
When Global News asked why the money wasn’t used to improve the existing home, he said it wasn’t worth it.
“That would be poor use of our community money, just to fix that part because the nursing home is outdated. That’s why we’re trying to get a new one,” Lloyd said.
“You’d just be putting that money to worse use.”
RQHR said the decision on either fixing, or permanently closing the wing has not been made yet.
Seven of the eight moving residents have already been selected. They will have to relocate to two separate facilities, at Broadview Centennial Lodge and Wolseley long-term-care facility.
Many residents such as Shirley Gwilliam said all they want is to stay at their home in Grenfell.
“I spent three months in Wolseley. It was okay but as soon as I was in here, you felt like you were coming home,” Shirley said.
“Why would you want to move?”
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