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Calgary general hospital demolition october 4 1998
Calgary General Hospital was the name given to a series of medical facilities in the city of Calgary.
Contents
Calgary general hospital demolition
Early hospitals
Acute Care facility
Calgary General Hospital #4 became the oldest hospital located in the city of Calgary by the time of its demolition in 1998. The facility was known in its later history as the Bow Valley Centre of the Calgary General Hospital after it was merged with the Peter Lougheed Centre, developing into a 960-bed hospital providing a wide array of in-patient and out-patient services. The facility was located in the community of Bridgeland in northeast Calgary, situated minutes away from Calgary City Centre.
Demolition
The Calgary General Hospital was demolished on Oct.4, 1998, and its services were transferred to the nearby Peter Lougheed Centre amidst the Klein government's efforts to stem soaring health care costs.
Ex-premier Ralph Klein's former chief of staff Rod Love said the facility was "old, dysfunctional and badly organized" and had to be closed if health care was going to be modernized.
The demolition was controversial in the wake of continued health care demands in Calgary. Proponents of the demolition argued that the facility was aged and unable to provide efficient service for the money required to operate it, "but the decision left Calgary without an emergency department downtown and destroyed a "state of the art" facility that would (10 years later) be very much in demand".
Amid all the closures and rationalizations, the Calgary General is unique in two respects. It is the biggest North American hospital ever to shut down and have its functions, equipment, staff and patients integrated into existing hospitals, and its closure leaves Calgary as the only large city in Canada without a downtown emergency department.
The hospital comprised numerous buildings constructed over an extended period of time beginning in 1910. In total, seven buildings over three stories in height and 84,000 m2 in area were imploded using ~2300 kg of explosives.