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Healthcare advocates from Fort Erie make trip to Queen’s Park
Posted: May 18, 2025
(May 17, 2025)
By: Kris Dubé, Fort Erie Radio
Heather Kelley says the fight to save the Douglas Memorial urgent care centre has come a long way since its planned closure was announced.
Kelley, the founder of Fort Erie Healthcare SOS, was one of six people from Fort Erie who made a trip to Queen’s Park on Wednesday. The group set out to make their position known that closing Fort Erie’s urgent care centre when a new hospital in Niagara Falls is built is not right for the community.
They were part of a convoy organized by the Niagara Health Coalition made up of about 35 people from various parts of the region, such as Port Colborne and Welland.
According to Kelley, an ongoing concern is that the provincial government “just wants to talk about how much money they’ve spent on hospitals,” and not about individual sites that are in jeopardy, such as Fort Erie’s urgent care centre.
Kelley and her group are demanding that the town’s urgent care centre remains open and that its hours are restored to 24-7.
“We’re absolutely making a difference,” she told Fort Erie Radio in an interview.
Douglas Memorial was once a full-service hospital with an emergency department.
About 15 years ago, the site lost its emergency department and was downgraded to an urgent care centre, and its hours were significantly reduced in 2023.
Fort Erie town council passed a resolution last year that petitioned the Minister of Health to commit to funding all services at the new Niagara Falls hospital without using the funding allocated for Douglas Memorial, and that the local funding allocation be set aside to support a redeveloped model that keeps primary care services in Fort Erie.
This motion has been supported by regional council as well as the City of Niagara Falls.
