BAIE VERTE, N.L. — Ron Sheppard wants nothing more than to celebrate this year’s holiday season with seniors and their families in Baie Verte.
The owner of the retirement centre being built in the town realizes for that to happen now would be nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
Due to lingering winter-like conditions this spring, the project which was supposed to get underway April 1 has been delayed. The site on Route 410 has been cleared but, as of early last week, the crew had been unable to start on the physical infrastructure due to snow and freezing on the ground.
Sheppard said the nine-month project would have to be completed in less than seven months to achieve his goal of having seniors in the facility by Christmas. However, he is not ruling it out just yet.
“I want — and sometimes I get what I want, but I am going to run out of luck sooner or later, — to have that place open on Christmas Day or before Christmas Day, so that the people that go there will have the very best Christmas ever,” he told The Nor’wester. “I want to be the one to show them I can do that.”
Sheppard is confident he would be able to do that because he says it is what he hears from residents of the Springdale Retirement Centre. He has owned that facility for 12 years, after he says he answered a request from the council of the time to open there. The former clergyman had a centre in Lewisporte prior to that, and he sold it to family when he started the facility in Springdale.
The man who started in the personal care home industry in the 1980s in Aspen Cove said, like in Springdale, he was asked to build in Baie Verte. Baie View Manor burned down in April of last year. The owners decided not to rebuild, leaving the town and peninsula without a facility for seniors. Some of the former residents of that home are located in his Springdale centre now, others are located in various places throughout central Newfoundland.
Sheppard says he first turned down the request to build in Baie Verte, but eventually felt it was the right thing to do.
“In talking to Central Health, they were desperate for a home in Baie Verte,” he said. “I decided to meet the need … I know this is the right decision. You have a little over 5,000 people down there with no place to go for the seniors to be comfortable and looked after. I just felt I wanted to do it.”
The facility is being built around the model in Springdale. There will be accommodations for 71 beds, with a plan to expand if the demand requires. He is expecting to employ 36 staff — everything from personal care attendants to cooks and cleaning — and Morley Rice has been hired as the administrator.
Sheppard said people can contact a local social worker or community health nurse for information on registering for a place at the facility, but his understanding is enough names have already come forward to fill it.
Sheppard says he is in the personal care industry to answer a calling as opposed to for business, and that is reflected in the operations he has and continues to run.
“You have to come to Springdale to see how I care for my residents,” he said. “I am not in it for the money, believe it or not. I puts everything back into my business that I make. I never had a bank account savings in my life, and I don’t plan on it.”
Barbara Forward, a member of the Baie Verte Peninsula Hospital Auxiliary, says the news of the retirement centre being built in the town was a welcomed relief for many.
“It is certainly greatly needed,” she said. “We are all getting to that age where we are starting to decide when to sell our houses and move into a smaller place or whatever.”
Forward said it has been difficult on the former residents of Baie View Manor and their families to be separated for more than a year. Since that time, the need for such a facility continues to grow for an aging population in a rural area.
“Having it your own hometown makes it much easier for families to visit,” she said, adding it benefits the entire region to have a new home coming to Baie Verte.
“It is exciting for everybody in the town because it is an aging town and it is nice to stay in familiar surroundings.”
