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Ruth Crafts, one of the founders of Hospice Kingston and a local social justice advocate, died at Kingston General Hospital on Jan. 27.
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According to longtime friend and fellow Hospice Kingston founder Marie Warner, the two women, as well as Carol Keith, thought there was a need for people dying in the hospital to receive end-of-life hospice services.
All three women were nurses, and along with their professional duties donated their nursing time to palliative patients living their final days at home.
In an interview on Wednesday, Warner said that in the late 1970s, Crafts was working as a social services nurse in the Kingston Cancer Clinic and started to gather information on the hospice movement.
Crafts studied the work of Cicely Saunders, an English nurse, social worker, physician and writer, on the subject and the importance of palliative care and terminal care research.
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Crafts also visited a hospice in Montreal early in the local movement.
“She went to Montreal, was exposed to that and came back and felt that something better can be done particularly in her area, cancer patients,” Warner said.
“She worked with some people (locally) and ultimately she was the one who gathered the group in the early ’80s and Hospice Kingston opened in 1985.”
Warner said Hospice Kingston was a grassroots movement with little money to get started.
“It was just a desire to have hospice services for people who particularly wanted to be at home to die,” she said. “Ruth was fundamental to the funding of it; that was a big part of her work.”
The people who joined the board were people who wanted to see it work, Warner said.
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When Hospice Kingston opened 37 years ago, there were no bricks-and-mortar places for dying patients, and to this day there still aren’t.
“Hospice as in a group of people caring for people in the community, but not a building itself,” Warner said. “That’s a big disappointment that we never had a freestanding hospice in Kingston.”
Hospice Kingston will be opening a 10-bed facility on the grounds of the Providence Motherhouse that will be one of the services offered at the new Providence Village.
The facility will offer in-home visiting, day wellness, caregiver support and grief and bereavement support.
According to a Providence Care update from Sept. 22, there is a tentative opening date for the facility of mid-2024.
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Keith left Hospice Kingston 1989, Warner in the early 1990s and Craft stayed on until 1997.
“At that time, we were really concerned about the quality of life for people in the palliative phase, and so many people didn’t want to die in the hospital, and this was the alternative to give them services and the freedom to choose to be at home,” Warner said.
“You had to have a passion for it or you wouldn’t have done it. She was really dedicated, committed and determined.
“The interesting thing about Ruth was her sleep was affected for years, and I think because she was up in the wee hours of the morning writing proposals for money grants.”
When Crafts left Hospice Kingston, she stayed involved with local social issues such as refugee immigrants coming to Canada as well as issues in Central America and South America.
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“After a short illness and a lifetime of chronic health conditions, Ruth died peacefully in the early morning of Jan. 27, 2023,” Crafts’ obituary stated.
“She was surrounded by family and received compassionate, dignified care from staff and fellow nurses in the Kingston General Hospital’s Critical Care Unit during her last days of life. She lived and died on her own terms.”
Crafts leaves behind her husband of 56 years, Stephen Crafts, the obituary said.
The couple were connected with their desire for social justice. They supported many charities, including international non-government organizations, helped marginalized students get access to education and supported local food initiatives, including Loving Spoonful and Martha’s Table.
Crafts also leaves behind children Bessie Sullivan and Zack Crafts, their spouses Doug and Emma, and grandchildren Hayley, Angus, Gracie, Naomi and Oscar.
A celebration of Crafts’ life will take place on May 6 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning.
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