“Who likes having an MRI at 3:00 in the morning in Thunder Bay?” That was the question Kenora Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford asked the crowd of around 100 people gathered across the street from La Verendrye General Hospital last Thursday, July 17, 2025.
Obviously, nobody raised their hand.
“It’s one thing to have to go to a bigger city centre for certain kinds of complex medical or surgical conditions,” Rickford said.
“But, my goodness, when you have to go there for the diagnostic pieces of it, it becomes more cumbersome, more difficult.”
Rickford says he regularly received letters and emails from constituents asking about bringing that diagnostic imaging capacity to his riding.
“So we got to work on some things,” Rickford said.
“We recognized for Kenora-Rainy River and Sioux Lookout, that our healthcare facilities and the constituents that they serve were very remote and distant from the kind of new technology that physicians and other healthcare practitioners were using more consistently, and MRIs are a certain portion of that.”
As Minister of Northern Development, Rickford’s portfolio before last spring’s provincial election Rickford convened with the Ministry of Health to allocate resources to go beyond licensing the MRI and support it with capital and operational funding.
Rickford announced that Riverside Health Care will receive $3 million to support the capital and operational requirements for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine.
The Ministry of Health is also expected to pitch in a significant amount as well but the corporation is still negotiating with the Ministry, Rickford says.
Rickford announced similar deals for both Kenora’s Lake of the Woods District Hospital and Sioux Lookout’s Meno Ya Win Health Centre in November and January respectively.
Following the announcement, Paul Brunetta, Past Chair of the Riverside Foundation for Health Care said the announcement was a historic one for the District.
“This is a truly historic day for health care in the Rainy River District and we are thrilled to have Minister Rickford here to share the incredible news,” he said.
“Today’s announcement reflects his support for Northwestern Ontario and will profoundly change healthcare across the district. Thank you to Minister Rickford for advocating on behalf of our community for this landmark piece of equipment, and to the volunteers for their support.”
Speaking on behalf of the Riverside Health Care Board of Directors, Vice-Chair Ben Norton said the day was an important advancement for local health care.
“Today is a vital step forward for diagnostics in our district, bringing us closer to care that is fair, accessible, and high quality no matter where you live,” Norton said.
“Thank you to everyone who worked tirelessly to make this happen, and a special thanks to Minister Rickford and the Ontario government for recognizing this need and investing in the future of health care in our region. This is just the beginning.”
MRIs are most often used in diagnosing soft tissue injuries and illnesses. They use magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed images of organs and other tissues which can be used to diagnose brain injuries, cancers, heart disease as well as muscle and ligament injuries.
Riverside already has one trained technician on staff and two more in the process of completing the training necessary to be MRI technicians.
Following the announcement, Riverside Health Care’s Ontario Health Team Lead and Quality Assurance Auditor Joanne Ogden said that the addition of the MRI to the diagnostic imaging suite will require renovations, and with the ongoing negotiations with the Ministry of Health, a definitive date and total cost of completion could not be identified.
“It will still be in the diagnostic imaging suite,” Ogden said.
“There are a couple of options that we’re looking at, but it will require a build-on so there is some additional infrastructure that will have to happen. I want to tell you as well that there will be a future announcement once our contract is officially signed with a vendor. The difference in what we will have is astronomical to the district, so we look forward to sharing that information as soon as our contract is signed. Watch for some information hitting our web pages. It’s transformational what we’ll be putting in this facility.”
