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The old Civic hospital campus is on life support, kept going by regular infusions of money for near-emergency repairs.

The latest is a multimillion-dollar replacement of its main electrical station, a 50-year-old beast in a basement in one of the oldest buildings of The Ottawa Hospital’s oldest campus, which will eat up most of a $6.16-million grant the Ontario government is giving the hospital for major repairs this year.

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That, in turn, is most of the $8.8 million all Ottawa’s hospitals are sharing for this kind of work. It’s all deeply unsexy: new windows, boilers, ventilation, roofs. The government pays for this stuff rather than asking the hospital to fundraise for any of it because good luck securing a big donation for the Smith Family Boiler No. 3. But it’s all as essential as diagnostic machines and surgical suites. No power, no heat, a leaky roof — no treatment.

The Civic uses five to seven megawatts of electricity depending on the season, said Fred Kendall, the hospital’s facilities manager, which is enough to power 5,000 to 7,000 homes. Replacing the main electrical station won’t be finished until as much as two years from now, after a bunch of intense planning to orchestrate it correctly.