Shriners hospital to be built in Montreal

Montreal has beaten out London, Ont. to be home to a $100-million children's hospital, after a vote Tuesday by delegates at a Shriners convention.

• REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Shawn Apel in Baltimore

The news was greeted by shouts of joy from the delegation of Montreal officials at the meeting in Baltimore, Md.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest called the news a "great victory."

Unidentified Shriners stand in line to greet Quebec Premier Jean Charest at the annual Shriners Convention at the Baltimore Convention Center. (AP photo)

"I wasn't convinced it was in the bag," Charest said Tuesday.

"You can't take anything for granted."

Montreal already has a 40-bed Shriners Canadian hospital that employs 250 people as it delivers free medical treatment to young patients from around the world with orthopedic diseases and injuries.

The building on Cedar Ave. is 80 years old and long overdue for either modernization or replacement.

Early reports indicate the existing hospital will be expanded into an 80-bed facility as a result of Tuesday's vote, in which more than half of the 1,213 delegates chose Quebec's largest city.

Montreal and London had waged a five-year battle which recently escalated to name-calling and mud-slinging, with suggestions about contaminated soil at the Quebec site over the location of the prestigious hospital.

After the vote, Montreal Mayor Grald Tremblay said it's time to rebuild relationships between the two cities and their provinces.

"We have fences to mend and I hope that the message is very clear. We can, as Canadians, build a promising future for all Canadians and it doesn't mean that we have to take away from one to give to another."

A search committee from the fraternal order had twice recommended London as the location, causing Montreal officials to pour on even more pressure in an attempt to keep the hospital and its jobs.

Among other factors, Shrine leaders cited the uncertainty over whether Quebec would stay in Canada over the long term.

• FROM APRIL 21, 2005: Shriners choose London for new hospital

• FROM APRIL 26, 2005: Separatism risk diverts new Shriners hospital from Montreal

Delegations from both communities and the premiers from both provinces travelled to Baltimore this week to woo the Shriners before Tuesday's vote.

London even sent along a 10-minute video, which at one point warned that the proposed hospital site in Montreal is contaminated and could prove a liability for the Shriners in the future.

Montreal officials insisted that the site, at a former railyard, has been decontaminated and meets the toughest standards. The province is planning to build a $1-billion superhospital on the same site, they pointed out.

Charest called the video "shameful," telling reporters in Baltimore: "I've never seen anything like that."

He said he told Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty the video was "sleazy."

McGuinty replied by saying the Ontario government was not responsible for the video.

Ontario's health minister, George Smitherman, said Quebec had no right to complain about London's tactics, telling the Toronto Star that Montreal organizers had tried to present London as "some kind of unsophisticated backwater."

The Shrine of North America, a fraternal order founded in 1872, has nearly 500,000 members.

The group operates 22 children's hospitals across the continent, treating severe burns and orthopedic conditions.