Nunavik health officials announce new location for Montreal boarding home

The red arrow marks the location of the new Nunavimmiut boarding facility on Montreal’s West Island. (GOOGLE MAPS IMAGE)

Nunavik medical patients staying temporarily in Montreal can look forward to better accommodations in the future because, after a five-year-long search, health officials in Nunavik have finally secured a location in the city for the region’s new patient boarding home.

The Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services said June 29 that it has received permission from the provincial health department to award a contract to the Montreal firm that will oversee construction and management of the new 143-bed facility.

The new patient boarding home, run by the Northern Quebec Module and used to house Nunavimmiut visiting Montreal for medical appointments, will be relocated to a site on Orly Avenue in Dorval, near the Montreal airport, the health board said in a July 9 release.

“We have anticipated this permanent move for several years and are extremely grateful that the ministry has finally approved this project,” said Larry Watt, the health board’s director of out-of-region services, in the same release.

The contract was awarded to a newly-incorporated Montreal-based firm known simply as 9218874 Canada Inc. The company’s directors, Richard Lieberman and Eric Maman, lead a Montreal real estate management firm called Moschelle, which has overseen other health centre projects in the city, including the CLSC St-Michel and the Jarry Medical Centre.

The new contract means the Northern Quebec Module’s current contract at the YMCA residence on Tupper St. — which currently houses Nunavimmiut patients — will come to an end, although the health board does not say when it hopes the new facility will be built and ready for use.

In the last update provided by health officials, they said the facility should be ready to take patients by February 2016.

The NRBHSS says the facility will be a four-storey structure, equipped with a cafeteria, administrative offices and 91 bedrooms, furnishing 143 beds.

The search for a new facility has been a long process, which began in 2009 when the Northern Quebec Module finally decided to move out of a crime-ridden stretch of St. Jacques St. West in 2011.

But when Nunavik health officials considered moving the facility to a former Chinese hospital on St-Denis in the Montreal neighbourhood of Villeray, the council borough and community members spoke out against it, alleging it would attract social problems the borough wasn’t prepared to deal with.

In 2011, the MNQ finally announced a temporary move to the YMCA facility on Tupper St in Westmount.

But from the start, Nunavummiut have had complaints about the 143-bed facility, from strict curfews to the quality of food served there.

That facility isn’t far from the intersection of Atwater Avenue and St. Catherine Street, an area that’s a magnet for homeless people, addicts and drug peddlers.

But Nunavik’s health officials have always pledged that the new facility will be located in a better neighbourhood — one that is easy to get to from the Montreal airport and the city’s new mega-hospital.

In any given year, the patient boarding home is expected to host about 6,000 Nunavik patients.