FULFORD HOME
A Brief
History
At the beginning of the 20th century, one of Brockville’s richest and most prominent citizens was Senator George T. Fulford, (1852-1905), owner of the Dr. Williams’ Medicine Company
. This patent medicine firm marketed throughout the world the popular nostrum "Pink Pills For Pale People", which formed the basis of his fortune. His palatial home on King Street East is now the Fulford Place Museum.
The
Liberal senator was active in several local charitable organizations or
institutions and became aware of the common misfortune of many poor elderly
women, widowed and single, who were forced by circumstances to take refuge in
the County workhouse, the hospitals, or sometimes even the jail. Unable to
interest the local politicians in the plight of these women, he included an
unusually far-sighted provision in his Will, drawn up in 1902. He directed that
a portion of his investments be set aside to accumulate for a 10 year period
following his death and that this sum, not to exceed $400,000, be used to build
and permanently endow a home for "indigent, Protestant, old women". (He was
aware, through his friendship with the local Catholic priest, that the Catholic
Church assisted their own indigents.) The women selected to live in this
purpose-built home would
have all their living and medical expenses taken care of, would be given a
monthly comfort allowance, and would have their burial expenses paid when they
passed away. For its time, it was a remarkably progressive vision.
Fulford died in an automobile accident (speed, streetcar,
collision) just three years after making out this Will. By 1915 the investments set aside for the purpose easily reached the
$400,000 target, and his son-in-law, Senator A.C. Hardy (husband of GT Fulford’s
daughter, Dorothy) set about to build the institution his father-in-law had
envisioned. Land across from the Fulford mansion was acquired in trade from the
town of Brockville, a prominent architect (Hugh Griffith Jones, one of the
designers of the Toronto Union Station) was engaged, and construction was begun.
By the end of 1917 the building, which Jones styled a "sixteenth-century Surrey manor-house type", was completed and furnished at a cost of $85.000. The remainder of the earmarked funds became the George T
Fulford Endowment Fund, the interest from which easily covered all the property
maintenance and living expenses for the 38 residents of the new Fulford Home. At
least at the beginning.
Over
the years, however, mounting expenses, especially medical expenses as a
chronically ill old age became more common, overwhelmed the ability of the
Endowment Fund to meet them. Some fee-paying residents began to be admitted, but
by 1965 even this source of additional revenue was insufficient. To keep alive
the vision of his father, his son, GT Fulford II, who by then
had succeeded AC Hardy as Chairman of
the Fulford Home Board of Management, converted the Home into a Charitable
Home for the Aged operating publicly with support from the Ontario
Department of Welfare. The former Board of Management became a Board of
Directors, and Fulford Home became an independent Corporation chartered in
Ontario "to own, manage, and operate a home for the aged as a charitable
institution".
Following incorporation, the interest from the Endowment Fund continued to be
paid to Fulford Home. In due course, the Home passed from the sponsorship of the
Ontario Department of Public Welfare (later called the Department of Social and
Family Services, and various other names) to that of the Ministry of Health and
Long Term Care, and operated under contract as a nursing home subject to all
the regulations imposed on every Provincial nursing home. As nursing care became
more complex, a building built in 1917 as a retirement home for the able-bodied
no longer met the requirements of a modern nursing home, despite its traditional
elegance and home-like atmosphere. In 1998 the Ministry decided that Fulford Home should soon cease
operating as a nursing home and that alternative accommodation for the residents
be sought.
Sherwood Park Manor, a nearby non-profit nursing home, agreed to enlarge its facility in order to accommodate the residents of Fulford Home. This addition, called the Fulford Wing, received the residents of Fulford Home in January, 2001, and the Fulford Home Board then put the property up for sale. In the late winter of 2002 it was sold to Susan Kendall and Nelson Williams, who intend to operate it as the Fulford Academy, a boarding school for the teaching of English as a second language. The proceeds from the sale were added to the George T Fulford Endowment Fund. The Provincial Court had already approved the redirection of the interest from that Fund to subsidize "indigent old women" at Sherwood Park Manor, thus keeping alive into the 21st century the vision of this extraordinary Brockvillian of an earlier era.
The Fulford Home Corporation is in the process of transforming itself into the Fulford-Sherwood Park Manor Foundation in recognition of its new mission.