Community rallies around veteran in hospital
A lonely veteran in palliative care has had so many strangers to visit lately that the staff at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) has had to turn some away.
George Henry Barber, 95, is one of the city’s last living Second World War veterans.
He’s been overwhelmed with well-wishers since the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment mentioned on their Facebook page on Sunday that he’s in hospital with no family or friends left to visit.
The posting encouraged people to drop by the hospital and see him. It included the room number at PRHC.
The information was widely shared online – more so than the regiment expected – and drew far more visitors than expected, too.
The deluge proved to be a bit much for a patient in palliative care, a spokesperson at the hospital said.
“I know he’s very, very grateful,” said Michelene Ough, a spokeswoman for PRHC. “But he needs a lot of rest.”
Ough did not have an estimate of how many people have visited, but she did say that nurses have had to “redirect” visitors who’ve arrived as Barber is sleeping.
“If you’d like to do something, please send a letter or a card,” Ough said. “It’s the nicest thing you can do.”
A posting on PRHC’s Facebook page on Wednesday thanked people for all the visits.
Among the visitors was Faith Dickinson, the Cuddles for Cancer founder; she tweeted a photo of herself delivering a blanket to the hospital for Barber on Tuesday afternoon.
By Wednesday, hundreds of tender-hearted comments were posted to the Hasty Ps Facebook page. Ough pointed out that one woman offered to pay for a television set rental in Barber’s hospital room.
Yet little was known this week about Barber: just that he joined the armed forces at 16, and then served from 1938 until 1945 (according to the Hasty Ps posting).
It wasn’t even clear on Wednesday whether he was a member of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment.
But none of that mattered to the visitors: all they cared was that a local veteran was alone in hospital at Christmas.
Meanwhile the fact that the Facebook posting went viral came as a surprise to the person who wrote it.
Cpl. Sean Francis updates the Facebook page for the Hasty Ps. He’s also a local chiropractor.
“I never expected this, to be honest,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’m pretty impressed. It shows we’re supporting our vets – which is beautiful.”
Francis heard about Barber through Cpl. Margot Bayer, a medic embedded with the Hasty Ps who lives in Trenton.
In an interview, Bayer said she was reading a closed Facebook page for members of the Canadian Forces when she noticed a posting about Barber. It was written by a staff concerned member at PRHC.
Bayer said she knew that some members of her unit in Peterborough would certainly go visit, so she posted a message to a private Facebook group for the Hasty Ps.
Next she contacted Francis and asked him to post it to the public Hasty Ps Facebook page that he maintains.
“I knew in my heart that we could make Mr. Barber’s last days memorable,” Bayer wrote in a direct Facebook message to The Examiner.
By Wednesday evening the posting had been shared more than 1,200 times and had roughly 150,000 views.
Francis said he’s received calls from people as far away as Alberta who want to send letters.
He also said that if Barber feels well enough, he’ll go to the hospital with some others on Christmas Day in dress uniform to present him with the regimental coin (a ceremonial gift).
“Just to let him know that he’s not alone,” Francis said.
To write a letter to George Henry Barber, address it to PRHC at 1 Hospital Dr., Peterborough Ont., K9J 7C6, and direct it to nursing station D2.