Sylvain Lamontagne, a carpenter foreman, has spent his life constructing hospital buildings and is dedicated to making a positive impact in his community. Much of that time has been spent building the ever-expanding Massachusetts General Hospital campus, working on the Lunder, White and Ellison buildings, and, now, on the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building. It’s not easy work, requiring long hours, early mornings and late nights, often in inclement weather, and resulting in missed birthday parties and dance recitals. Sometimes, the work requires Sylvain to bear witness to some of the hardest moments of patients’ and their families’ lives.
Sylvain could be working on a corporate office or bank construction project, which would be far less demanding, but also far less meaningful, he says. Instead, he chooses to be here. For Sylvain, all of the sacrifices are worth getting to play a part in Mass General’s mission to provide compassionate, equitable and patient-centered care — care he experienced first-hand after his wife’s 2024 cancer diagnosis.
“This really matters. We just build buildings, but it’s about so much more than a building at Mass General,” he says. “It’s a job, but it’s more than that. It’s about the bigger picture.”
“The Bigger Picture”
At the onset of every hospital project, Sylvain gives his team a talk outlining protocols to be followed inside the hospital space that continues to function day-to-day while they work, and how they should operate with humility and respect once they cross the threshold into patient care spaces as “visitors.”
“I always start by asking my team, ‘who wants to be here?’” he says. “You have to want to be a part of this, to truly care, to carry yourself with tact and really commit yourself to this work.”
For Sylvain, enduring the conditions outside on the construction site is much easier than working inside in a clinical setting. “Inside the hospital, we often see things we don’t want to see,” he says. “Sick children, parents grieving — it’s really hard.” But even in those really hard moments, Sylvain remains motivated by the knowledge that he is “helping contribute to the success of the hospital” — the success of a hospital which, just this year, he experienced firsthand.
Close to Home
When Sylvain shows up to work on Mass General’s campus working on the construction of the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building, set to serve as the cornerstones of cancer and heart and vascular care for patients across Mass General Brigham, he says he is particularly attuned to the experiences of the patients and family members walking past the site — because it wasn’t long ago that he was in their shoes.
In early 2024, Sylvain’s wife, Kim, was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Under the direction of her Mass General gynecologic oncologist, Eric Eisenhauer, MD, she recently completed her treatment protocol radiation and a full hysterectomy, and is now healthy and back to life as usual.
“It was a really emotional experience,” Sylvain says. “It put everything into perspective.”
While his wife was receiving cancer treatments, Sylvain was often working on the construction site just across campus — as he puts it, “outside, looking in.”
“From every nurse and doctor and patient coordinator to other family members of patients I shared moments with in waiting rooms, every aspect of our experience at Mass General was not just good, but fantastic,” he says.
This experience inspired Sylvain to treat every passerby with extra care, even instructing his team members to walk patients to appointments themselves when needed. In this way, Sylvan says they’ve become true members of the care team and Mass General community, treating patients with the same compassion that any Mass General healthcare provider would.
And Sylvain isn’t the only person working on the construction of the Ragon Building who has personal stories tying them to Mass General — for many members of the construction crew, even stepping foot inside the hospital means exposure to sights, smells and sounds that can be triggering to their past experiences supporting loved ones through health issues, whether it’s a spouse who had an organ transplant or a grandchild who battled cancer. These experiences are the driving force for many of the folks working on the building, and behind their motivation to make sacrifices for the good of their community, Sylvain explains.
“Projects like the Ragon Building are hard, and mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting,” Sylvain says. “It would have been easier to go work somewhere else. But working at a place like Mass General changes you forever, for the better.”
To learn more about how you can support the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building, contact us.
