How a Quebec town fought to keep its ER open and welcomed foreign workers

After her breast cancer was detected in the fall of 2023, Martine Riopel’s weekly routine started every Monday morning with a visit to her local hospital in rural Quebec for blood tests. Then, she and other patients chatted while they waited for their physicians at the oncology ward.

It was during one of those chats that she heard about the hospital’s plans to close its emergency department in the evenings. “People were stressing about it and it stressed me, too,” she recalled. “I said to myself, ‘No way.’”