The origins of the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital can be traced back to the Clifford homestead. In January 1906, the Cliffords began their homesteading journey to the Peace and settled in Flying Shot Lake. Maude Clifford, the former school teacher, set up the first, primitive “hospital” in the Peace Region.

In 1909, the Forbes, having arrived at Flying Shot Lake, immediately set about to prepare a crude, improvised “hospital” from their small log shack on the Clifford homestead. In 1919, Agnes Baird arrived from Edmonton. She was the first Registered Nurse in the Grande Prairie area.

In 1911, with more and more settlers arriving, the Forbes found it necessary to move from their tiny cabin on the Clifford homestead, to a new location near Bear Creek. They put up a small log building with a shingled roof and devoted it to hospital work. It was called the Pioneer Hospital of Grande Prairie. It contained a ward for patients and a room for the Registered Nurse. This structure still stands on its original site, now 10424-96 Street in Grande Prairie, just two blocks east of the current QEII Hospital.

In 1913, a new site for the hospital was chosen and on June 16, 1914, the building was completed and officially opened and formally re-named the “Kathryn Prittie Hospital.

In the spring of 1929, a new Municipal Hospital was built immediately east of the old log structure, which at that time, was described as the biggest and best, west and north of Edmonton.

In 1958, Grande Prairie was incorporated as a city, and the hospital added a $750,000 surgical wing.

Sixty four years later, in 1978, on the historic site of that pioneer hospital, settlers who were present at the 1914 opening, witnessed with their descendants the sod turning ceremony performed by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, for the present-day Queen Elizabeth II Hospital. The opening of the new hospital on June 15, 1984, culminated eight years of planning and work. The $96 million acute care project was followed in 1986, with the opening of the $15 million long-term care facility, Mackenzie Place.

In 2006, the Hospital in Grande Prairie celebrated it’s 100th Anniversary of service to the community of Grande Prairie and the surrounding regions.