by Phoebe Lazier
As we start the new year and reflect on the BC Rural Health Network’s growth and accomplishments in 2023 and what we are looking forward to in 2024, we are looking back to the inception of the BC Rural Health Network in 2017 and the incredible work the founding members have done over the years with immense appreciation and gratitude.
One board member, Pegasis McGauley, has been with the Network since its inception in 2017. Although the network has seen many changes, our focus has remained unchanged. As a tireless supporter of public health, a strong seniors’ advocate and a local community champion in Nelson, driving positive change and accessibility to care, Pegasis perfectly represents the values of the BC Rural Health Network.
As we got to talking, we quickly realized that Pegasis has been a healthcare advocate for as long as I have been alive. In fact, during the emergence of regional centralization in 2002, Pegasis camped outside of the Kootenay Lake Hospital from July to September as part of SOS (later called NASH, Nelson Area Society for Health) to protest and ensure that the Hospital didn’t lose any of their equipment to the regional hospital in Trail. Thanks to Pegasis and the young mothers of SOS, my mother, along with thousands of expectant mothers in the Nelson area over the past 22 years, was able to deliver her baby (my brother) in a medical setting without having to leave the community as so many expectant mothers across rural BC must. To date, the Kootenay Lake Hospital has an incredible maternity and obstetrical program which works closely with local service providers including Apple Tree Maternity, which is part of Community First Health Co-op, to provide high-quality care to expectant mothers in Nelson and the surrounding area. Kootenay Lake Hospital is the only hospital in Canada that offers full-service obstetrics-gynecology without any other overnight surgery.
Pegasis’ work does not stop there. She is the vice chair and a founder of the Community First Health Co-op and Connected Communities, a coalition of West Kootenay health advocacy groups that held biannual meetings with Interior Health administrators. She is a founder and Co-Chair of TEETH, a not-for-profit dental clinic which offers reduced-fee dental care for Kootenay-Boundary low-income community members including children, families and seniors.
Pegasis served on the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK) board as an alternate director for area E for seven years and continues to attend Hospital Board meetings. She also served as a patient representative on Interior Health’s Kootenay Boundary Home Health working group. She is Secretary of the Nelson and District Seniors Coordinating Society and continues to advocate for better home care and other seniors’ initiatives.
Pegasis’ devotion to the community does not go unnoticed. In 2022, she received a Queen’s Jubilee Pin for her incredible community service, making Nelson a better place for everyone who lives there. Her work, experience and contributions are also greatly appreciated by the BC Rural Health Network.
Both in her volunteer work and her career, Pegasis has devoted her life to helping others and improving our society. She spent 23 years working in a group home, taking care of adults with disabilities.
From her beginning in activism as a 22-year-old in 1964 advocating for civil rights in the States to her two decades of public health and seniors’ advocacy in the Kootenays, the lives touched by Pegasis’ work are uncountable.
With almost exactly 60 years between us, I am fortunate to learn from her and call her a friend. In 60 years if I have accomplished half of what Pegasis has in helping others and bettering the world we live in, I will consider myself successful.
