Crossroads for a British Columbia Mission: Esperanza Hospital and Ministry Centre

Abstract

A significant proportion of the hospitals in remote parts of British Columbia were run by Christian churches and organizations. Twenty-six such hospitals in the 1930s were identified in this study; just over were half Catholic and the remainder Protestant. Apart from some largely celebratory work written from within denominational perspectives, little historical work has been done on these hospitals. Esperanza, originally founded as a mission hospital, is a ministry centre with a seventy-five year history in one of the more isolated areas of BC. This examination of its history highlights several issues that will be explored in this study. First, there were differences between mission hospitals. Esperanza, operated by an evangelical mission, differed significantly from some other Protestant hospitals. A second topic concerns the conflicting priorities in religiously-run hospitals after the provincial government began paying operating expenses in 1949. These were highlighted in the process leading to the closure of the hospital by the province in 1973. Finally, the study of Esperanza hospital has much to reveal about the nature of First Nations – Christian relations. Most denominational missions and churches had become largely inactive among the Nu-chah-nulth on the west coast of Vancouver Island by 2000. The reason was often lack of interest on the part of the people but during that same period the ministry of Esperanza was in increasingly high demand and its staff was often not able to keep up with requests for its services. Indeed, in 2006-7, an outcry on the part of many Nu-chal-nulth against an