Powell River staff celebrate past and present of Olive Devaud

This year’s recent Powell River Long Service Awards had a somewhat different feel to them, with dozens of past and retired staff from Olive Devaud Residence joining in to celebrate what will likely be the last awards ceremony of its type in the current residential care facility. Olive Devaud residents are scheduled to move to the new Willingdon Creek Village facility in less than a year.

“We received RSVPs from 70 people but wound up with more than 100 people showing up for our pancake breakfast,” exclaimed Leonard Wegner, Powell River’s manager of residential care who has worked at Olive Devaud for the past 13 years.

The ceremony highlighted many of the changes that have occurred since the facility opened its doors in Dec. 1967 and was known as The Senior Citizens’ Boarding Home. The name was changed to Olive Devaud Residence in 1978, in honour of Olive Devaud herself who donated the land for the building and was considered by some to be the “Florence Nightingale of Powell River.”

Leonard sums it up with, “It’s a bit of a bittersweet thing because we are moving on to a new building, which is much anticipated and moving along, but it’s sad to leave the old behind.”