“My mom is in for treatment and she doesn’t speak any French – could you go up to see her today?”
That request was the epitome of Lynne Beattie’s career, a common question responded to daily by an anything-but common front-line healthcare worker.

Beattie has recently retired from her role as the well-known liaison to the English-speaking community at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS).
Beattie served as the CHUS’ liaison for seven years, but her background in health care dates back to 1966, when she first was hired at the Sherbrooke Hospital as a nurse.
Beattie only stopped working to have children, so it’s no surprise her retirement comes only weeks before the arrival of her first grandchild.
“It was a big decision, a difficult one,” Beattie told The Record. “You feel like when you go, you’re leaving the community high and dry.
“But I have to think of my family too.”
Beattie was nursing supervisor at the Sherbrooke Hospital when the centre closed in 1996 and the building became a pavilion of the new Sherbrooke Geriatric University Institute.

For full story, please pick up today's Record

By Sarah Rogers
Sherbrooke

2009-07-02