Bomb scare forces evacuation of 2,000 workers from superhospital site

Around 6 a.m., Montreal police received a call for a possible suspicious package left inside the site. Examining the unfinished corridors of the site, police used a bomb-sniffing dog during their search. Shortly after 1 p.m., police announced the coast was clear. 

Many of the roughly 2,000 workers evacuated from the site found themselves stranded before they could start their weekend early, as some of their cars were parked within the police perimeter.

The bomb scare froze work for the day for a hospital project that has been plagued by scandal. An alleged bid-rigging scheme has surfaced involving contractor SNC-Lavalin and some of the former leadership of the McGill University Health Centre, which will run it. Former MUHC director Arthur Porter is now wanted by police. And the MUHC recently announced a budget shortfall of $50 million that would result in layoffs.

The hospital will be Canada’s largest when it opens, and for some, like Nick Patulli, that day came can’t come soon enough. Patulli saw the writing on the wall and bought a building site back in 2000, when the hospital project was just an idea. He theorized that eventually doctors would need a site to hold conferences and their own medical offices nearby, so he sank $3.5 million into a convention centre that opened in 2009.

“You have a lot of doctors coming into the area, and a lot of these doctors need an external clinic,” he said. “Being 300 feet from the site, it would be a no-brainer.”  

Yet since construction has choked traffic in the area, his business has suffered. And while he notes that construction is proceeding on schedule, he’s anxious to see the day the hospital opens- currently scheduled for summer 2015.

For him, the bomb scare was simply a novel event in the midst of all the other events surrounding the hospital.

“We’re going through some very rough waters right now,” he said. “But I think it will all calm down in the very near future.”