A nurse practitioner visit health care center founded in small town

The worst is watching her suffer the indignities of the cancer treatment. It doesn’t help matters that he’s forced to drive six hours to the nearest hospital. He must cross the border four times on the return trip, and there is always a wait at customs, in addition to interrogating questions, while his sick mother, shaking from her illness in the passenger seat, hides her bald head.

He worries that they will ask her to get out – they have before – when she’s feeling weak so officers can rummage through their trunk and belongings.

For residents of Campobello there’s no way to the mainland of New Brunswick during most months without travelling through the United States, a 45-minute drive to St. Stephen. It’s a way of life for the island’s 1,000 or so residents who live at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and when it comes to many day-to-day routines – health care chiefly among them – life is not easy.
“I have felt like a criminal,” says Glenn Alexander of times crossing the border.

He recently went to Saint John for tests and isotope injections. At customs, he handed the agent a letter from his doctor explaining he was returning from the radioactive treatment. He says he was then taken out of his car, pressed against a brick wall and scanned for nuclear weapons.

“It was humiliating and degrading,” Alexander says.

The residents of Campobello say their health care system on the island is insufficient and that they feel isolated from their country. They call themselves “the forgotten part of New Brunswick.”

(STARLINE)

In rural Maine, the stars and stripes seem to fly from every other telephone pole. Old buildings in need of a coat of paint and abandoned gas stations on the winding route to St. Stephen dot the landscape. A bridge separates Campobello from Lubec, Maine, but an ocean separates the island from the rest of the province.

For a few months in summer, residents can catch a provincial ferry from St. George to Deer Island and take a private ferry from Deer Island to Campobello. The other 10 months residents must drive 130 kilometres and cross two borders to get back and forth. Campobello is the only Fundy island without a direct connection to the rest of Canada. And some people can’t leave at all.

“It’s where I’ve always lived. I know I have a choice, that I could move, but my family’s here,” Lisa Henderson says. “Yes there’s some that pull up stakes but I don’t want to, this is home to me. It’s all I know.”

As a nurse at the Campobello Health Centre, a small clinic located at the nursing home, Henderson sees people with addictions to drugs and alcohol, some with criminal records, trapped on the island without a way to access health care because they are not permitted to enter the U.S.

She has seen people’s mental health deteriorate without care. She sees patients with chronic illnesses, such as cancer, who have to travel six hours for treatment. She also sees many people on the island “with their heads in the sand.”

When Henderson heard that the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation was organizing an assessment of health needs on the island, she signed on.

The corporation realized that access to health care is neither fair or easy in a place where most people must leave the country – at least temporarily – to get most services.

A doctor and a nurse practitioner visit the clinic on the island three days a week. Serious ailments require a trip to Maine or another part of New Brunswick.

Many problems in the health care system are caused by the isolation, and many residents are afraid that what little they have might eventually be taken away.

Pam Matthews says that because many islanders suffer from addiction – and many of the addicted have criminal records – they are not able to enter addiction services, detox centres, methadone programs or get counselling because it means crossing the border, where convicts are turned back. The nurse says more health professionals and social workers are desperately needed on the island.

And the services available on the island are not accessible to everyone, she says. Campobello has no buses or taxis and because many people can’t afford a car, there’s no way for them to get to the hospital.

When she can, Matthews picks up patients herself and gives them a ride, but says she shouldn’t have to.

“In the health field, to me, it is appalling what we do not have,” Matthews says. “If you seriously need mental health, getting someone to St. Stephen and treating them the way they need is almost unbelievable.”

But the health needs assessment is not only about hospitals and traditional care. The group is examining everything that affects health care, from transportation and income levels to behaviour, such as physical activity, in the community.

The group is even exploring whether a provincial ferry service would solve many of the problems – increasing access to health care as well as increasing the quality of life for isolated island residents.

Matheson moved to Campobello four years ago from Vancouver to care for his parents, both diagnosed with cancer. His father has died, but his mother is still undergoing treatments.

He loves the beauty on Campobello, but he misses his freedom to come and go as he pleases.

Without a gas station on the island, Matheson says residents must go to the U.S. daily just to fill up. Getting groceries is a hassle. He says he gets stressed out thinking about what he is allowed to bring across and what is banned on any given day. If a person wants to garden they can’t, because flowers are not allowed across the border.

“Even if you want to go to St. Stephen you have to cross the border four times, and people don’t realize what it can do to your psyche, it’s like reporting in to your parents,” Matheson says. “If you want to just go for a drive it’s, ‘Where you going? How long are you going to be there? You get through to go to St. Stephen and it’s ‘Where you from? Did you purchase anything on your way over?’”

Marianne Alexander says that every Christmas she worries about how she will get her wrapped gifts across the border.

“You feel like you are a second class citizen,” she says. “We should have another way to get into our country without travelling through the U.S., we shouldn’t have to leave our country for medical treatment, to go shopping, to see our children, go to a basketball game. We shouldn’t have to go to another country to do that and our politicians have let us down in many, many ways.”

Many residents feel the provincial politicians have not advocated for them.

Members of a local service district committee say that over the years, there has been talk of incorporating the island into a village that would be run by a mayor and council and would have a leadership front to fight its battles, though not everyone supports that idea for fear taxes would rise.

Tony Huntjens, the Conservative MLA for Charlotte-Campobello, says introducing a ferry service would go a long way to improving health care.

“I have been after the Department of Transportation to get a ferry service that would give them access three days a week and see how that progresses,” Huntjens says. “I haven’t gotten a positive response yet. Everything is wait, wait, wait.”

Huntjens agrees with Campobello residents that they are not receiving the health care services they deserve and that a ferry service is key to improving access.

The MLA says it is unfair that the other islands, Grand Manan and Deer Island, have ferries and are seeing an increase in trips and new boats built whereas Campobello residents are “forgotten.”

And he agrees that a municipal government needs to be formed. Huntjens says a council with a mayor would have a stronger voice that could help influence the province.

“I’ve been doing my best to speak on their behalf but it’s not really enough. The MLA is only as good as the people behind him and that’s the case here,” he says. “Unless they have that formulated unity and speak with one voice as a community it’s very difficult to make things happen. If the government notices a weakness of consensus they will shoot holes in any argument I make.

“If I was in their shoes it would make me feel angry.”

Greg Thompson, the MP for Southwest New Brunswick, said the federal government would consider investing in a ferry, but he has never been presented with a proposal, something that would have to come from the community.

“I understand the uniqueness of Campobello. I’ve been a member of parliament for 16 years and I’m the only member who has to travel through a foreign country to get to his riding,” Thompson says.