Barrie Ontario Hospital

Barrie Ontario has been growing rapidly for the last ten years, and with growth of a town into a small city comes the planning of infrastructure and essential services. One service which cannot be overseen is the local hospital.

Barrie Ontario´s hospital ( Royal Victoria Hospital, or RVH) opened in 1997 in the Northern part of the city and within walking distance to Barrie´s Georgian College.

RVH is a modern building which presently has 297 beds, and 18 bassinets in it´s level II special care nursery, however, with the rapid increase of the local population, also comes the need for more beds, more doctors and more advanced medical equipment.

In the last several years, Barrie residents along with RVH has pressured the Ontario government for funds to extend the hospital and build a cancer unit to service cancer patients who presently have to drive to Toronto for treatment.

With the support of the provincial government and Barrie residents, including the Barrie Ontario Business sector, the funds for the much needed expansion, have been raised.

Phase one of the project will add 100 beds to the hospital as well as increasing the size of it´s emergency room. The imaging department will also increase in size as will the operating rooms.

The Barrie Hospital is used by many non Barrie residents, and therefore has one of the busiest emergency rooms in all of Ontario, making this expansion a much needed project for the city.


The Hospital is now in it´s tender phase, and will make a decision soon on which construction company will be awarded the contract to build the new extension to the hospital.

Ground breaking for the new expansion is anticipated for early 2009.

Barrie Ontario: Tornado

Although Barrie Ontario is famous for the amount of snow it gets during the winter months, the frequency of extreme weather patterns during the milder spring and summer months is quite low. On May 31, 1985, mother nature came roaring through Barrie Ontario, and in 30 seconds managed to leave a trail of destruction that was too cruel to understand.

The tornado that hit Barrie Ontario on that fateful day, left eight people dead and 155 injured, three hundred homes were destroyed, some of them completely scattered on the ground in a two foot high pile of rubble.

Most of the damage was done on Crawford Street, leaving many residents without a home, and sleeping at the local armory.

The tornado caused 100 million dollars in damage.

If you want to see more on the Barrie Ontario Tornado, visit this url. There is a short video post tornado done by cbc television.


http://archives.cbc.ca/environment/extreme_weather/topics/1713-11757/