Dr. Robert Cushman was the medical officer of health for Ottawa and, more recently, Renfrew County. He also served as the first chief executive officer of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network.“One-ninety-nine over – ” I heard a voice say as the band around my bicep loosened. My blood pressure had risen to a dangerous level. I was supposed to be recovering from neurosurgery that I’d had some 24 hours earlier.
I had been admitted to the Ottawa Hospital for the treatment of a chronic subdural hematoma five weeks after a bicycle accident. I had thought I’d escaped from the initial fall unscathed thanks to my helmet, but the damage was internal; two craniotomies later, I was on the road to recovery after a rocky hospital stay with a rebleed and this frightening blood-pressure incident.
The nurses were a diverse group. The nurse who cared for me in my darkest hours was Punjabi; a second had arrived from Ethiopia at the age of 9; a third, who was from the Philippines, was upgrading her requirements for certification in Canada. Another was a refugee who had fled with her family from Colombia’s FARC guerrilla group. The housing affordability diaspora had also brought some of the nurses to Ottawa from more expensive cities across Canada.
The benefits are much higher for police officers, too. The province publishes an annual list of public-sector workers who make more than $100,000, and the number of police officers in Ontario listed increases every year; in 2022, the number exceeded 1,600 in Ottawa alone. There may have been exceptional circumstances because of last year’s occupation of downtown Ottawa, but let’s not forget that during the worst of the COVID-19 years, nurses also worked long and hard hours.