A new idea that supports rural Nova Scotians has won the International Palliative Care Innovator of 2024 award in Montreal.

The Grief Library allows patients and their loved ones to borrow books on grief and grieving free of charge. Books are received and returned in the mail, something that is of particular benefit to Nova Scotians who live in rural areas.

The idea was created by Sarah Scott and Terri Milton. Sarah is a grief specialist for the Valley Hospice Foundation. Terri is a librarian in academic and public settings and is volunteering for Valley Health Foundation in this role.

“It’s such a simple idea. We laugh at being called innovators…The award host said we were ‘brilliantly analogue,’” Sarah told Entrevestor.

She said the simple idea is a response to the province’s patchy internet coverage, poor public transit, and declining traditional supports.

“When I visited patients in rural communities, I was struck with how isolated people become and how so many of our new grief resources are internet based,” she said. “These resources don’t have reach into rural Nova Scotia and the demographic is not as connected in that way.

“When I visited folks with serious illness, I realized that once you can’t drive, you are physically isolated because of the lack of public transit. Often the family has moved away, and the normal community supports for grief aren’t there, such as rural churches and neighbours next door who used to give natural grief support -- the people who’d show up with a casserole.

“In rural communities, there are now fewer natural gathering points. If someone’s spouse had died, they said how lonely they were and unconnected.”

Sarah said the Grief Library allows rural dwellers to benefit from the many publications on grief that have been published in recent years.

“Covid seemed to spark a recognition that the normal experience of grief is a sense of loss, and we have all collectively experienced so many losses,” she said.

“There is a broadening understanding of the need to talk about it. Vulnerability is the word of our generation. People are self-publishing about their experiences of grief…These amplifying voices let people know they are not alone.”

The Grief Library is funded by donations received by the Valley Hospice Foundation and is volunteer led. In Montreal, it bested 57 submissions from 14 countries at the Canadian Virtual Hospice’s 2024 Innovation Challenge to take home the title and the $1,000 cash prize. 

Sarah said she was happy to learn that many of the attendees at the conference intend to create their own Grief Libraries.

“Terri and Sarah’s Grief Library stood out among a highly competitive field of innovations from around the world. It is an outstanding example of a locally-driven solution making a real difference,” said Shelly Cory, Executive Director of the Canadian Virtual Hospice.

The Canadian Virtual Hospice is a world-leading online source of information and support about advanced illness, palliative care, loss and grief.