Leon Lozowchuk, from the North Battleford Kinsmen Indoor Rodeo Committee, right, presents a cheque for $10,000 to Jackie Etcheverry, left, of the North West Historical Society, for the Legacy Trail project. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Remembering Old Saskatchewan Hospital

Kinsmen show support for Legacy Trail with $10K donation

Nov 10, 2023 | 2:00 PM

The Legacy Trail project to commemorate the old Saskatchewan Hospital saw some added support this week when the North Battleford Kinsmen Committee donated $10,000 to the project.

Leon Lozowchuk, from the North Battleford Kinsmen Indoor Rodeo committee, presented a cheque for the donation to Jackie Etcheverry, of the Battlefords North West Historical Society during the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce’s Battlefords Business Excellence Awards gala on Wednesday.

The Kinsmen raised the funds from proceeds from the rodeo it held in the spring.

During the BBEX awards dinner, individual bricks from the old Saskatchewan Hospital’s chimney stack were decorated to be used as centrepieces to raise awareness of the Legacy Trail campaign.

A view of the former Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford before it was demolished in 2021. (supplied photo/Ministry of Central Services)

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The Historical Society committee is working towards starting phase 1 of the Legacy Trail project in 2024, with the development of the courtyard adjacent to the historic chapel.

Debi Anderson, a director on the Battlefords North West Historical Society committee and project manager of the Legacy Trail committee, said the committee is thrilled with the support from the North Battleford Kinsmen Indoor Rodeo Committee.

“We’re reaching out to service clubs and looking for funding for our project,” she said. “We’re very happy with the Kinsmen putting up that $10,000. We very much appreciate it.”

In total, the Historical Society hope to raise about $750,000 for the project.

“Fundraising is underway and we are awaiting several promised donations,” Anderson said.

An artist’s rendering of the proposed Legacy Trail. (Submitted image/Battlefords North West Historical Society)

“We plan to build a plaza where the old front doors of the hospital stood, and have a monument there built out of the smokestack bricks,” she added. “We recovered 15,000 smokestack and regular hospital bricks. The province has set them aside for our project.”

Plans are to create a plaza and several story-telling pedestals that will describe various aspects of the history of the hospital. The plans will also describe the Indigenous use of the land before colonization.

The story of the legacy of how mental health has evolved over the years will also be related to this interpretive site.

“Those are the types of stories we hope to tell on a series of interpretive pedestals,” Anderson said. “The trail will end at a courtyard adjacent to the chapel. The chapel is the only building left on the site. The province is in the process of renovating it right now.”

The North West Historical Society hopes to use the $10,000 it received from the Kinsmen Club to create the courtyard for the project.

The interpretive trail will likely be under half a kilometre in length but it has the potential to connect to the trails that are already in place at the new Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford, so patients and staff can access the old chapel easily.

“They intend to use it [the chapel] for programming for patients at the hospital as well as make it available to the community for their use,” Anderson said. “As well, we have a real good opportunity to connect to the River Valley Trails and the Trans-Canada Trails ultimately.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow