Celebrating 100 Years of Caring
Organizers of the Centenary Celebration held at St. Michael’s Haven on May 15th, 2024, were pleasantly surprised with the number of former staff including nurses, doctors, cooks, housekeepers, and maintenance people who came to reminisce and reconnect with former coworkers for the auspicious event. Doctors Kondzielewski and Colins, who both practiced for at least a decade in Cudworth, were in attendance and former co-workers enjoyed chatting with them and sharing tales of times past. Mistress of Ceremonies for the afternoon, Darlene Billesberger, thanked everyone for coming, the cooks for preparing the meal, and the tenants at St. Michael’s Haven for allowing the reunion to take over the foyer of their home for the afternoon.
One hundred years ago, Rev. Casimir Cismowski determined a need for nursing care in the Cudworth district and reached out to the Franciscan Sisters of St. Elizabeth in Humboldt to provide for that need. Dr. Longault had already established a hospital in a private home when Sr. Euphrasia Weiss and Sr. Benedicta Yungwirth arrived in Cudworth on December 1, 1924. With the few beds available in the private home consistently being occupied, it was determined that a larger hospital needed to be constructed and that construction needed to be in accordance with the provincial guidelines of the time. Mr. Anton Stadelmann of Englefeld was hired as the contractor, and volunteers from the Cudworth district began digging the basement on June 16th, 1926. The cornerstone of the building was put in place in September and with work progressing rapidly on the interior it was ready to receive patients by early December and telephones were installed in January 1927. The official opening of St. Michael’s Hospital occurred on December 12th, 1926, and patients were moved from the private home to the new hospital on December 16th and 17th of that year with the aid of local people. As recorded in the Cudworth history book, Walk of Ages, “Some patients were transported by car, truck, or even carried on their beds.”
In the years before 1942, when Dr. J. Schropp arrived in Cudworth, Dr. J.A. McDonald worked alongside Dr. Longault, and following Dr. Longault’s return to London to further his studies, Doctors A.G. Genereux, E.V. Kershaw, and H.M. Bigelow provided care in the district.
Providing healthcare in the early years of the twentieth century was a vastly different system. Individual hospitals had to have a way to feed those receiving care and providing food for patients in St. Michael’s hospital was done through the establishment of a farm at the hospital site. The farm was operated until, in the late 1940s, the new Saskatchewan Hospital Services Plan (SHSP) began providing funding for hospitals. St. Michael’s Hospital then began purchasing the food from the farm, which was then managed by Nick Dzomback until 1964, when it was sold.
In 1961, Dr. Zigmund Kondzielewski arrived to take over medical care in Cudworth, remaining there until 1971. During his ten-year tenure, the ‘new’ hospital was built to replace the old two-story one that had been built in 1926. This new hospital met the needs of the medical advances of the day and still stands today as St. Michael’s Haven. Throughout the 1960s, Drs. U. Schakeral, T. Nunan, and M.O. Opseth came and went also providing medical care to patients. Following Dr. Kondzielewski’s departure, Dr. F. Oosman was the sole physician in Cudworth, and when he left in 1975, three doctors, Drs. G. Colin, S. Tanna, and D. Tanna took over. After the Tannas left two years later, Dr. Colin remained serving patients in the community well into the 1980s, with Dr. Fred Cenaiko from Wakaw also providing extended service to patients at St. Michael’s.
From the start, in 1924 when the Sisters first arrived in Cudworth, they were supported by local women who took an interest in the hospital. In 1933 they formally organized under the name of the Hospital Guild and later became known as the St. Michael’s Hospital Ladies Auxiliary. The group provided volunteer services and organized fund-raising projects, before and after the initiation of the SHSP, to purchase equipment for the hospital. Starting in 1964 and continuing to 1984, the Auxiliary sponsored and helped to organize the volunteer ‘candy-stripers’ program, the participants of which were known as the “Michaelettes.” Sr. Hildegarde taught a course in Junior Red Cross Nursing and over the course of the program, approximately 150 girls enrolled and volunteered their time at St. Michael’s Hospital. They committed to being at the Hospital after school and on Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. Some of their tasks included reading to patients, feeding children, distributing meal trays, and performing small errands for the nursing staff.
In early 1997, news came from the provincial government that acute care funding for St. Michael’s Hospital would end, and a Community Health Centre would take its place. A new structure would be built for the Health Centre and St. Michael’s would stop functioning as a hospital on July 1, 1997. It operated as an interim Health Centre until an addition being constructed at the Cudworth Nursing Home was ready to open. The Sisters were not interested in leaving the community they had served for so many years and believed they could provide a needed caring facility. Therefore, once it was no longer needed as a Health Centre, renovations began to convert the former hospital to an assisted living facility, called St. Michael’s Home. The name changed to St. Michael’s Haven in 2004. The original brick structure of the former hospital, while giving a strong nod to the era it was built, has been lovingly maintained and converted to give it more of a home-like feel rather than an institution, even though hints of its former life can still be seen. Initially, 14 rooms were renovated from patient rooms into tenant suites, and by 2000 a total of 26 suites had been created of which currently almost three-quarters are occupied.
During the final years of the hospital’s operation, the only positions held by the Sisters were those of Administrator, Director of Nursing, and Pastoral Care. With the numbers in their Order declining and their average age ascending, it was time to pass the work to other hands. On October 20, 2009, the ownership of St. Michael’s Haven was transferred from the Sisters of Elizabeth (of Humboldt’s St. Elizabeth Convent) to a joint ownership of the Town of Cudworth and the Rural Municipality of Hoodoo #401 for the princely sum of $1.00. Sr. Philomena said the following in her address to the crowd that day, “We pass on the torch of caring for the elderly without any strings attached…When the Hospital closed it was a tragic day for the Sisters, but today we celebrate to see the Haven has taken on the task of care for the elderly. We thank all who have helped the Sisters to get to this point in their lives; we become smaller (in numbers), and you must get bigger.”
Staff are on duty at St. Michael’s Haven 24 hours a day, and meals are prepared on-site by their amazing cook. The former hospital’s laundry area is equipped with up-to-date washers and dryers for the tenant’s use and an attached three-season room provides an ‘outside’ area to eat or entertain guests. A games room occupies what looks like it could have been a former nursery or observation room, while the nursing station was renovated to become a conversation area with the med room becoming a small library. The beautiful chapel at St. Michael’s Haven became the new worship site for the Ukrainian Catholic Parish of the Holy Eucharist, Cudworth in 2022. The rising costs associated with owning a church building led to the sale of the property and with the chapel at the Haven having no regularly scheduled users, the parish could schedule service dates and times without worrying about conflicts. The regular worship revives the religious heritage of the facility.
The 100-year celebration was a testament to the dedication of the Sisters to ensure care for the people in their community, and the many nurses, doctors, and support staff who passionately cared for the sick, hurting, and aging amongst them.
Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder
