This is the second episode of Small Town Week, a five-part series in which we examine big problems facing small communities.

Canada’s health care system has been stressed for many years, but the pandemic pushed the threadbare system past its breaking point.

And nowhere else has our capacity for care—in everything from family doctors to walk-in clinics to hospitals—been tested more than rural areas, and small towns. Emergency rooms in smaller areas have cut back hours, or closed temporarily, often due to a lack of either doctors or nurses. But now Minden, Ontario’s emergency room is closed for good.

Is Minden’s ER the first of more to come? What happens to a town when its primary centre of medicine evaporates? What other options are there for care, in both Minden and other communities like it?

GUEST: Emily Stonehouse, Editor of The Minden Times

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