Foyer Pere Fiset in Cheticamp; photo courtesy L’Université Sainte-Anne
A local municipal councillor says members of the community came together to make sure provincial officials adopted their plan to renovate Foyer Pere Fiset in Cheticamp.
Alfred Poirier, the Inverness Co. representative for District 1 (Meat Cove-Pleasant Bay-Cheticamp), says members of the community volunteer group Community Matters Allons-y Ensemble and the Foyer Pere Fiset board, as well Mona Poirier, the home’s administrator, did most of the heavy lifting.
Poirier tells The Hawk members of Community Matters created and collected signatures for a petition to provincial officials, and board members and administrators of Foyer Pere Fiset put together the Vision 2020 committee, which built the renovation plan.
“That put some action- pressure, basically- to move on with it,” he says. “They were there, and they were working very hard too on the behalf of the Foyer.”
Poirier says the plan includes complete renovations of the nursing home, with individual rooms and private bathrooms; it increases the total beds available from 70 to 74.
He says a big chunk of the credit belongs to Claude Poirier, a community member who spoke directly with then-Premier Stephen McNeil and Cape Breton-Canso MP Mike Kelloway to make sure the project happened.
Poirier says 40 or 50 community members were involved in bringing the plan to reality.
“They were there helping the cause,” he says. “They were the people that really pushed the project.”
Poirier says he heard little from Allan MacMaster, the MLA for Inverness, about Foyer Pere Fiset in the past year, and only saw him at a few community meetings before MacMaster announced he confirmed the renovations were coming in questions to Zach Churchill, the province’s health minister, in March.
MacMaster tells That Hawk the positive messages he’s shared about the Foyer Pere Fiset expansion have been about congratulating board members, management, employees, residents and their family members.
He says he has raised questions about the home in the legislature, videos of which are available on his Facebook page, met with board members and administrators, and has done what he can to advocate for the renovations.
Poirier says MacMaster could have been more present in the community and done more to support their efforts in the past year.
