ManitobaParents in the northern Manitoba city of Flin Flon have been without birthing services for seven years now, leaving some families feeling forgotten and overlooked by the health region as officials continue to recommend parents leave the community to deliver babies.Health region says demand for obstetrics services remains low in the northern Manitoba cityLauren Scott · CBC News · Posted: Dec 01, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 5 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 6 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.The Flin Flon General Hospital suspended birthing services in November 2018, after the hospital’s only full-time obstetrician left. (Panom Pensawang/Shutterstock)Parents in the northwestern Manitoba city of Flin Flon have been without birthing services for seven years, leaving some families feeling forgotten and overlooked by the health region as officials continue to recommend parents leave the community to deliver babies.The Flin Flon General Hospital suspended birthing services in November 2018. The hospital’s only full-time obstetrician had left months before, the Northern Health Region said at the time.Logan Church was one of the first mothers affected by the closure. She was pregnant with her second child and about three and a half weeks from her due date when she learned she wouldn’t be giving birth in Flin Flon.”It was crazy the way that it shut down like that,” she recalled. “It was terrifying. It was frustrating, it was unfair.” Flin Flon mother Logan Church and her children Dempsey, 7, left, and Dominyk, 8, right. (Submitted by Logan Church)Church quickly made arrangements to stay in Dauphin, about 420 kilometres southeast of Flin Flon, where she waited for weeks until she was ready to deliver her son Dempsey, who celebrates his seventh birthday on Dec. 1. “I was just so stressed out, so overwhelmed the entire time,” she said.Years later, Church said it doesn’t feel as if the obstetrics ward will reopen anytime soon. “I think that if it were a priority of the health region … it could be reopened. But it doesn’t feel like they’re making it a priority.”‘Started to give up hope’Northern Health said in a statement to CBC News that demand for obstetrics services “remains low” in Flin Flon, and the health region “continues to monitor patient volumes and service needs” in the surrounding area.Currently, an obstetrician from The Pas visits the Flin Flon Clinic twice a month for appointments with patients who are 28 to 30 weeks pregnant, or sooner if the parent has a high-risk pregnancy, Northern Health said.It also said Flin Flon-area residents can access obstetrics and gynecology services in The Pas, which is more than 100 kilometres away.In the first few years of the closure, a group of local mothers called the We Want Birth Committee advocated for birthing services to reopen in Flin Flon, but they “sort of started to give up hope” that things would change after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, says Shannon Michel, who was a group member.They haven’t met for at least three years. “I can’t say that there’s been much progress in getting birthing back or any obstetrics unit,” Michel said.”It puts a lot of people at risk … not having those services available,” she said.If Michel were to get pregnant again, it would be considered a high-risk pregnancy due to her Type 2 diabetes.”Not having somebody here in case there was an emergency or anything like that, it definitely stopped me from having another child.”Flin Flon Deputy Mayor Alison Dallas-Funk says the lack of birthing services in the city is putting families at risk. (Travis Golby/CBC)The closure has also affected thousands of people living in the surrounding communities on both sides of the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. Flin Flon Deputy Mayor Alison Dallas-Funk says the border city’s hospital is the “medical hub” for residents in Bakers Narrows, Sherridon and Cranberry Portage on the Manitoba side, and Creighton, Denare Beach and Pelican Narrows on the Saskatchewan side.But no matter where a pregnant patient is driving in from, they will have to travel further to give birth — sometimes as far as Saskatoon, more than 430 kilometres away, or Winnipeg, 630 kilometres to the southeast, Dallas-Funk said.”If you decide to have a child, you have to actually leave,” she said. While the health region has a patient transportation program that subsidizes transportation costs, she said parents are worried about out-of-pocket costs for hotel accommodations.Some mothers have taken the risk of staying in the community as long as they can before heading to the hospital in hopes of having an emergency-room delivery, according to Dallas-Funk.”Women will stay and try to wait until they’re in labour to not have to go … [but] you don’t know if there’s going to be complications. So you’re putting yourself at risk,” she said.”It’s going to take one woman doing that and then one child being lost, or one woman being lost, for this health region to realize how important that is.”In a statement to CBC News, Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said “no one should have to leave their community to access care that should be available closer to home.” The NDP government has expanded prenatal care options in Flin Flon through regular obstetric clinics and improved emergency response practices for pregnant people who go into labour expectedly, they said.The province has also been working with the Northern Health Region and Shared Health on the issue, said Asagwara.’Chances are you’re delivering on the highway’But the current situation is worrying for Flin Flon mother Kelsey Roncin, who is scheduled to be induced in The Pas on Dec. 12.She’s afraid her baby may come before then.Her 10-year-old daughter, who was born in Flin Flon’s hospital, came two and a half weeks early, Roncin said, and her labour and delivery took just four hours. She’s worried this baby will be born even faster. Kelsey Roncin is scheduled to be induced in The Pas on Dec. 12, but she worries she may end up giving birth within the ambulance ride south. (Lauren Scott/CBC)”By the time you figure out that you’re actually in labour … if you have a very quick labour and delivery, chances are you’re delivering on the highway,” Roncin said.”I’m definitely a little more worried about this one, just having to make it to The Pas.”Seven years after the birth of her son Dempsey, Church says it feels like the health-care needs of northern Manitobans are “forgotten.””I feel like if it were roles reversed, and we had to tell people in the south, ‘You’ve got to drive up to Flin Flon to give birth,’ there would be massive outrage and it wouldn’t last for long,” Church said. “[It’s] heartbreaking that probably 90 per cent of my friends have had traumatic birth experiences. And it’s directly related to the lack of an obstetrics floor in Flin Flon.”ABOUT THE AUTHORLauren Scott is a Winnipeg-based reporter with CBC Manitoba. They hold a master’s degree in computational and data journalism, and have previously worked for the Hamilton Spectator and The Canadian Press.
Flin Flon parents feeling forgotten after 7 years without birthing services
