August 26, 2023

St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Sudbury has gone through many changes and will likely be demolished soon. The history goes back to 1944 when the sisters of St. Joseph at Sault St. Marie took on the project of building a new hospital in Sudbury. A group of doctors had contacted them and requested help in creating a facility in Sudbury. The government was not into financing hospitals at that time so the sisters mortgaged their homes to finance the construction. They started by purchasing a seven acre site on Paris Street. It took until 1950 to complete at a cost of $3.1 million dollars. The image below shows the entrance to the former hospital.

When it opened it had 200 beds but within 4 years another treatment wing was opened that added an additional 100 beds to the hospital. By 1960 there were 326 beds in the building which had originally been planned to serve 190 beds.

Eventually there were three hospitals in the Greater Sudbury Area and the General Hospital, as it came to be known, began to specialize in trauma care and surgeries. By 1980 a CAT scanner was added to go along with the Nuclear Medicine, Intensive Care, Neurosurgery and poison control departments. At this time the hospital had 375 beds.

The hospital took on a greater role in trauma care in the region and consequently, on October 16, 1986 the new helicopter pad was opened. This allowed the hospital to receive air transported patients from great distances. All three Sudbury hospitals were amalgamated in 1997 under a provincial restructuring plan. Construction soon began on Health Sciences North and St. Joseph’s was closed on March 29, 2010.

A study was completed to see if the building could be repurposed as a long term care facility but it wasn’t fiscally practical. Developers bought the site with the initial idea of making an apartment out of the old structure. Eventually this idea was abandoned and the building continued to sit untouched until 2019. That summer muralist RISK was commissioned to paint a mural on the outside of the structure as part of the annual urban art and music festival known as the Up Here Festival. The festival aims to beautify the city by installing murals and other public art as well as providing a music festival. When it was completed the 80,000 square foot mural became the largest mural in Canada.

The hospital was built backing into some rocky landforms and because it was out of sight of the road, the back side wasn’t painted with the mural. The image below shows how many of the windows have been broken by vandals.

On August 8, 2023 the developers put forward a new plan that includes the demolition of the existing hospital structure and the construction of three buildings. A 20 story condominium, a 16 story rental tower and a 12 story retirement residence. I am in Sudbury for work four times a year and will keep an eye on what happens to the site.

Google Maps Link: Sudbury Regional Hospital

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