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Grade 9 CASS student Julian La Fortune launches a petition Monday to shine light on frequent emergency department closures, Sault Area Hospital wait times
Published Apr 13, 2026 • Last updated 6 hours ago • 5 minute read
Julian La Fortune, 15, wants the province to provide emergency funding to North Shore Health Network to ensure the Thessalon emergency department remains open around the clock.Article content
A Thessalon teen aims to help cure his community’s ailing emergency department situation.
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Julian La Fortune, a Grade 9 student at Central Algoma Secondary School (CASS), launched a regional petition Monday, aiming to secure 2,000 signatures in a bid to shine brighter light on frequent closures at the town’s hospital and “extreme” wait times at Sault Area Hospital, in Sault Ste. Marie.
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La Fortune brands these health-care “gaps” a “critical failure” of public safety and essential service delivery for residents of the North Shore and Algoma District.
“When our local ER goes dark, public safety is compromised,” La Fortune said. “Residents shouldn’t have to risk long-distance travel in an emergency because of predictable staffing shortages.”
The petition calls on the province to provide emergency funding to the North Shore Health Network (NSHN) to ensure the Thessalon emergency department remains open around the clock, implement a “robust” physician recruitment strategy specifically for Northern Ontario and allocate resources to Sault Area Hospital to reduce wait times to “provincial safety standards.”
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La Fortune said he is confident the petition will garner 2,000 names.
“Almost definitely,” he told The Sault Star Sunday.
EVERYONE AFFECTED
La Fortune, 15, said he and virtually everyone he knows in and around the small community, 90 kilometres east of Sault Ste. Marie, can tell a story about being impacted by emergency department closures, which, as of late, happen almost weekly. As if to hammer home the point, the community’s ER is slated to begin the week on a sad note, closing for 24 hours, starting Monday at 8 a.m.
When closures occur – Thessalon now reports about 70 per cent of North Shore ED shutdowns compared to some 60 per cent early in the new year – NSHN indicates ambulances will be rerouted to the closest ER, whether that be one of the network’s other two sites – Blind River or Richards Landing – or Sault Area Hospital, the region’s principal health-care facility.
La Fortune tells of being sent to Blind River recently and waiting days for a bed to open up at Sault Area Hospital.
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“And, also, that’s happened for almost everyone in Thessalon,” La Fortune said.
Monday duties including printing off some 180 petition sheets and delivering them door-to-door, to local businesses and around school “because I know teachers would almost definitely sign it.”
La Fortune plans to “co-ordinate the submission” of petitions with provincial NDP Leader, and head of the Official Opposition, Marit Stiles to have results delivered to Queen’s Park.
THESSALON ON THE RADAR
The rash of recent emergency department closures in Thessalon is not going unnoticed among top Ontario health-care brass, says North Shore Health Network’s top official.
Ontario Health and the Ministry of Health are “working with us,” and the Huron Shores Family Health Team is “trying to come up with some solutions,” Tim Vine told The Sault Star last week.
“So, I think there’s a growing recognition that the people of Thessalon deserve to have a reliable access to their emergency department, and that providing that reliability of access is something that the North Shore Health Network can’t do alone,” said Vine, tasked with trying to ensure rural emergency departments east of Sault Ste. Marie are staffed, most often with locums, temporary physicians often flown in from southern Ontario.
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Other NSHN sites have shouldered ED shutdowns and Sault Area Hospital has had its own share of challenges.
In fact, at one point in early January, SAH was shouldering 119 per cent occupancy, with 18 patients admitted in the emergency department waiting for an inpatient bed and another 31 individuals waiting to be seen. Non-urgent patients were asked to use SAH’s Virtual Home Waiting Room to check estimated wait times and wait from home until closer to their expected turn, and patients with non-urgent needs were asked to consider alternatives, such as contacting their family doctor, nurse practitioner, or visiting a community walk-in clinic.
On a brighter note, SAH says its ER waiting room project, launched last August, has yielded encouraging results for patients with less urgent concerns.
The wait time to see a physician, nurse practitioner or physician assistant, for patients using the virtual queue has been reduced by half, compared to those with similar symptoms and health issues who physically wait at the hospital.
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The amount of time spent in the emergency room has also dropped by half for patients using the tool, SAH said.
Out of nearly six million ER visits in Ontario in 2024, close to 300,000 patients – or 4.92 per cent – left without being treated, according to Montreal Economic Institute, a non-profit research organization.
Dr. Stephen Smith, a SAH emergency department physician, said his hospital’s data show that using the virtual waiting room for certain health concerns is helping reduce the likelihood that patients will leave the hospital before seeing a health-care professional.
“We had really positive results,” he said.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
La Fortune said he believes money – or lack thereof – has prompted much of Thessalon’s problem. He hopes Stiles will bring up the possibility of salary increases for physicians to – in part – encourage more family doctors to hang shingles in rural communities.
“Even if we have physicians all day, every day, salaries are still very low for physicians, and they should definitely be higher,” he said. “And it’s one of the root causes for the shortages.”
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As of earlier this year, Bruce Mines/Thessalon had two doctors out of a complement of 5.5, Richards Landing had two physicians out of a complement of five, and Blind River had four out of a complement of six, albeit one MD was not providing hospital service as part of a “planned and staged” retirement. So, three provide hospital support.
La Fortune has no family doctor; he’s seen by a nurse practitioner handling orphan patients in the community. He would very much like to have a dedicated doctor, someone more close.
“I think everyone does,” he said.
Those familiar with La Fortune’s definite career aspirations would not be surprised with this most recent act of advocacy; he wants to be either a defense lawyer or a detective constable with Halton Regional Police Service’s intimate partner violence unit.
And if he had his way, NOSM University students would be more “encouraged” to not only remain in Northern Ontario, but practise in the hinterland where need is greatest.
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He has met medical students training at NSHN’s larger Blind River site and said he understands why Thessalon, which he describes as more of an outpatient emergency clinic/ambulance transfer point, might not be so beneficial as a learning centre.
“In Thessalon, it’s kind of usually the same thing,” La Fortune said. “They’re just different patients.”
Anyone wishing to support the petition or request a paper copy to collect signatures can e-mail algomahealthpetitions@gmail.com or mail inquiries to PO Box 456, Thessalon, Ont., P0R 1L0. Reach out via text or call 705-297-8960.
with files from The Canadian Press
On X: @JeffreyOugler
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