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The Antigonish Memorial Regional Hospital, formerly St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, is seen in Antigonish, N.S., on Oct. 1.Ingrid Bulmer/The Globe and Mail
The crucifixes are gone. The masses are done. And the carved wooden statues of nuns have been relocated to a local museum, marking the end of an era at a regional hospital in the northeastern Nova Scotia town of Antigonish.
A congregation of aging Roman Catholic nuns, who founded St. Martha’s Regional Hospital more than a century ago, will no longer sponsor the facility, clearing the way for the health facility to offer medical assistance in dying and abortion services under one roof.
The historic change for the Nova Scotia hospital is happening at a time of powerful religious opposition to MAID and intense debate in the courts over who should be allowed access to the procedure.
“We’re not closing doors, we’re not dying yet,” said Sister Brendalee Boisvert, the Congregation Leader of the Sisters of St. Martha, known as “the Marthas,” in an interview.
“We’re just choosing where we can put our best energies, and we felt that administration and hospital – because it’s so litigious too now – that it’s not an area that we have a lot of members’ expertise in. So we decided this is a good time.”
On Oct. 1, the hospital officially became Antigonish Memorial Regional Hospital – no longer a Catholic hospital, where abortion and MAID were prohibited. The hospital, which serves about 100,000 people from Antigonish, Guysborough and surrounding communities, was the only publicly funded hospital in Nova Scotia where access to health care was restricted because of a religious affiliation.
The Nova Scotia Health Authority, meanwhile, says no changes to services have been made at the hospital, as it’s undergoing a transition period.
During a visit to France late last month, Pope Leo XIV blasted the legalization of medically assisted death as immoral, calling it “false compassion.”
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The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has been hearing a challenge to the federal government’s decision to bar MAID in cases of mental illness.
In B.C., a Charter challenge in April was centred around the case of the late Samantha O’Neill, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 cervical cancer at age 34 and transferred from a faith-based facility for a MAID procedure. According to Dying With Dignity Canada, which was part of the court challenge, she “went through a painful, undignified forced transfer” and “suffered needlessly in her final days because of the religious beliefs of a publicly funded health care organization.”
The decision from the Supreme Court of B.C. is expected this fall and could determine whether publicly funded religious health facilities banning MAID is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
For the past 30 years, the Nova Scotia nuns have been a sponsor of the Mission Assurance Agreement, a partnership with the province designed to ensure the hospital operates under Catholic values. Prior to that, the Sisters of St. Martha had run the hospital since its founding in 1906.
When MAID became legal a decade ago, the Catholic hospital prohibited its use. Advocates argued that a publicly funded hospital enforcing a religious-based ban violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Then in 2019, after mounting public and legal pressure, the Nova Scotia Health Authority quietly allowed MAID to take place at a local health clinic nearby.
With the Catholic influence now removed, it eliminates the need for the transfer of fragile patients to the clinic, which could cause unnecessary pain or even the loss of access to MAID if they aren’t stable enough for the transfer, said Jocelyn Downie, Schulich School of Law professor emerita in Dalhousie University’s faculties of law and medicine. Ms. Downie was a member of the legal team for the landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision Carter vs. Canada, which paved the way for MAID.
“More dramatically, it now means that abortion, gender affirming care, surgical sterilization, birth control etc. can now be provided at that hospital,” she wrote to The Globe and Mail in response to questions.
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“People in Antigonish requiring and desiring these services will no longer be told that they must leave their community for health care just because the Catholic Church disapproves of it.”
Patients in some other provinces, including B.C., Alberta and Ontario, face challenges and even absolute barriers to access to care simply because it violates the beliefs of some protected religious institution, Prof. Downie added.
The Nova Scotia Health Authority, which runs the hospital, did not answer whether abortion or MAID would be offered on site. Spokesperson Jennifer Lewandowski said “access to care and services continues to be our priority.” Changes would be made in collaboration with physicians and staff, she added.
“As part of that transition, we are looking carefully at the hospital’s services and policies and how they will more closely align with other hospitals across Nova Scotia,” she said in a statement.
The Marthas, whose median age is 87, had arranged for another group, Catholic Health International of New Brunswick, to take over as sponsor of the Mission Assurance Agreement when they announced earlier this year that they were stepping back. The provincial government and the health authority declined the proposal.
“After much discussion it was determined that in the Sisters’ absence, it no longer made sense to have a new sponsor,” Nova Scotia Health Minister Michelle Thompson wrote in a statement to The Globe and Mail.
While deconfessionalization – the removal of religious influence – occurred in Quebec health facilities years ago, Dying With Dignity Canada chief executive Helen Long said the change in Nova Scotia represents a shift in people’s beliefs.
“I think people are very focused on their own autonomy, their own choice, their own suffering and they’re continuing to want access to the care they need regardless of the institutions,” she said.
Nearly 60 per cent of the population of Antigonish County identifies as Catholic, according to Statistics Canada. And Catholicism is woven into the community and local institutions because of the Sisters of St. Martha.
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They started as a congregation in 1900, cooking and cleaning for the students and faculty at St. Francis Xavier University.
As a tuberculosis epidemic raged and with no health care institution for hundreds of kilometres, the nuns established a cottage hospital with six beds in 1906.
In 1926, a new state-of-the-art brick building opened, and St. Martha’s School of Nursing became affiliated with St. FX, a collaboration that ended in 1995.
In 1996, a regional health authority, accountable to the province, took over running the hospital from the sisters. In 2015, it became province-run as part of a provincewide amalgamated health authority.
The legacy of the Sisters of St. Martha won’t be completely wiped out, said Sister Boisvert. A stone carving “legacy piece” is in the works for the entrance to the hospital to remember their contributions. Both she and the health authority spokesperson say the word “memorial” in the hospital’s new name recognizes the history, care and compassion that the sisters helped establish in the town 120 years ago.
“It’s a new beginning,” Sister Boisvert said.