A new facility in the region aims to provide a peaceful and supportive environment for those entering the final days of their lives or who are awaiting placement in a personal care home.
The Pembina Valley Hospice House cut the ribbon at 533 Tower Dr. in Winkler last week. Their staff are currently completing final training with the regional health authority ahead of welcoming the home’s first guests sometime next month.
“Today is not just the opening of a building, but the beginning of a promise—the promise of compassion, dignity, and care for those who need it most during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives,” said Celma Pinto, who heads up both the hospice and the Heavenly Care Agency, which has provided private home care services across southern Manitoba for the past several years.
CEO Celma Pinto says it will provide a peaceful and supportive place for people in need of care
“Hospice care is about more than medical treatment. It’s about comfort, respect, and support, not only for patients but also for their families and loved ones,” Pinto said.
Access to hospice care in rural areas especially has long been an identified challenge in Manitoba.
People at the end of their lives or waiting for a bed in local care homes don’t want lengthy stays in the hospital or to be sent to care homes outside the area while awaiting a long-term placement, Pinto said.
“This facility changes that. It brings essential service close to home, close to families, and closer to people who need it.”
The facility is located in a former house that has been renovated for its new purpose while still maintaining a home-like environment.
It offers six beds and shared kitchen, dining, living room, and washroom areas, all created to be accessible. It will be staffed 24/7 and provide residents with meals, grooming and personal care, medication assistance and administration, and bathing and hygiene support. Both short- and long-term stays are available, including palliative, end-of-life, and transitional care for people waiting for a bed elsewhere.
It’s the culmination of a longtime dream for Pinto. As a youth in Mozambique, she dreamed of a career in health care, but it was a scholarship in business studies that brought her to Canada on her own in 1997.
She finished her studies with no real vision of becoming the entrepreneur she is today, she recalled.
“My goal was to become a medical professional, and I didn’t give up,” Pinto said. She secured a job as a health care aide and later pursued a nursing degree. “My heart is all in health care, and here we are today.”
She started up her home care business to meet the growing need for private services in rural Manitoba, and then took the next step to open this hospice for the same reason.
“I live here, I live in Southern Health, I live in the Pembina Valley,” Pinto said. “The community has helped me for the past 10 years, and I felt once again that they need more.”
They’re starting small, but dream of eventually opening up other similar facilities to offer more beds across the region.
“As small as it is, this will give people opportunity to see that anything is possible,” Pinto said. “This serves as an example for other entrepreneurs to say that it doesn’t need to be a big facility—a small gesture will open the eyes of young people [with] ambitions like I [had] 10 years ago, to create something bigger.”
You can learn more about Pembina Valley Hospice House online at pembinavalleyhospicehouse.ca.
