This project, The History of Health Care in the Lakes District, was initiated in 2019 by members of the Burns Lake & District Seniors Society and spearheaded by Ron Miller, Bernice Magee, Barb Pederson, Donna Paynton, and Marie Hunter. Payton represented the Burns Lake & District Health-Care Auxiliary, while Hunter was the administrator at the Lakes District Hospital & Health Centre at that time.
The project’s steering committee sought donations from a variety of sources. Several organizations responded to the call, including Burns Lake Community Forest Ltd., the Burns Lake & District Community Foundation, the Burns Lake & District Health-Care Auxiliary, the Dr. Bruce and Evelyn MacEwen Estate, the Burns Lake & District Community Foundation, the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, and the Stuart-Nechako Regional Hospital District.
Gathering information on almost a century of health care history was a mammoth undertaking. In addition to asking residents for assistance, the steering committee tapped into the Lakes District Museum’s archives. Their efforts yielded a treasure trove of documents and photographs. Sadly, many of the photos of health care workers lacked captions. In an attempt to put “names to faces”, the committee ran a “Can You Name the People in the Pictures?” advertisement in consecutive issues of Lakes District News with financial support from Marmon Financial Management.
Committee members spent hours reviewing this mountain of information. Other individuals helped. Sandra deHoog did an amazing amount of work categorizing many of the archived files from the Lakes District Museum and Lakes District News. Jean Reimer, president of the Burns Lake & District Health-Care Auxiliary, researched articles related to the history of that society.
Committee members Bernice Magee and Ron Miller deserve special mention. In addition to reviewing archival material – and, in some instances, writing draft articles – both were instrumental in pushing the project forward to a successful conclusion.
The committee initially intended to present the history of health care in digital form via a free-standing electronic kiosk located in the foyer of the new hospital. Work on the project stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic. When it resumed, the organizing committee decided that the information would be better presented on a website.
In 2025, the Lakes District Museum Society took on the project at the committee’s request. Completing it was a daunting task. Despite the vast amount of work previously done by the committee and its dedicated volunteers, museum staff spent hundreds of hours researching and writing the material presented on these pages. And the deeper they dug into the topic, the more information they uncovered.
The result is not a comprehensive history of health care in the Lakes District because the subject is too broad to present here in its entirety. A lot has happened in health care during the past century, even at the local level, and telling the whole story would take more time and resources than we have. What we offer, therefore, is a summary of the key events and milestones in local health care, as well as the stories of some of the people and organizations involved. Yet for every individual and organization whose name appears in these stories, countless others who made important contributions to health care in the Lakes District are not mentioned. We can’t name everyone, but we’re confident that the patients whose lives they touched will never forget them.
The project’s steering committee sought donations from a variety of sources. Several organizations responded to the call, including Burns Lake Community Forest Ltd., the Burns Lake & District Community Foundation, the Burns Lake & District Health-Care Auxiliary, the Dr. Bruce and Evelyn MacEwen Estate, the Burns Lake & District Community Foundation, the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, and the Stuart-Nechako Regional Hospital District.
Gathering information on almost a century of health care history was a mammoth undertaking. In addition to asking residents for assistance, the steering committee tapped into the Lakes District Museum’s archives. Their efforts yielded a treasure trove of documents and photographs. Sadly, many of the photos of health care workers lacked captions. In an attempt to put “names to faces”, the committee ran a “Can You Name the People in the Pictures?” advertisement in consecutive issues of Lakes District News with financial support from Marmon Financial Management.
Committee members spent hours reviewing this mountain of information. Other individuals helped. Sandra deHoog did an amazing amount of work categorizing many of the archived files from the Lakes District Museum and Lakes District News. Jean Reimer, president of the Burns Lake & District Health-Care Auxiliary, researched articles related to the history of that society.
Committee members Bernice Magee and Ron Miller deserve special mention. In addition to reviewing archival material – and, in some instances, writing draft articles – both were instrumental in pushing the project forward to a successful conclusion.
The committee initially intended to present the history of health care in digital form via a free-standing electronic kiosk located in the foyer of the new hospital. Work on the project stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic. When it resumed, the organizing committee decided that the information would be better presented on a website.
In 2025, the Lakes District Museum Society took on the project at the committee’s request. Completing it was a daunting task. Despite the vast amount of work previously done by the committee and its dedicated volunteers, museum staff spent hundreds of hours researching and writing the material presented on these pages. And the deeper they dug into the topic, the more information they uncovered.
The result is not a comprehensive history of health care in the Lakes District because the subject is too broad to present here in its entirety. A lot has happened in health care during the past century, even at the local level, and telling the whole story would take more time and resources than we have. What we offer, therefore, is a summary of the key events and milestones in local health care, as well as the stories of some of the people and organizations involved. Yet for every individual and organization whose name appears in these stories, countless others who made important contributions to health care in the Lakes District are not mentioned. We can’t name everyone, but we’re confident that the patients whose lives they touched will never forget them.
