BALTIMORE (AP) – Amid the clowns, mini-cars and tasseled fezzes at this year’s Shriners convention, a bitter turf battle is being waged over the location of an $85 million children’s hospital.

About 20,000 Shriners and their families came to Baltimore for the start of the convention Sunday, with an election planned Wednesday for a new Imperial Potentate of the international fraternal organization that runs 22 charitable children’s hospitals in North America.

But much of the focus this year is on another vote, expected Tuesday, on whether to accept a recommendation to move Canada’s only Shriners hospital from Montreal some 400 miles west to London, Ontario.

Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario, and Jean Charest, premier of Quebec, led large delegations into Baltimore on Sunday, eager to press their cases before the vote, and Shriners delegates say they have been deluged for weeks by e-mail and telephone calls from Canada.

“The lobbyists are almost clouding the issue,” said Mike Clevenger, a 55-year-old Shriner delegate from Columbus, Ohio. “I hate to use the word propaganda, but they’ve pushed the issue so often, it’s almost confusing things.”

The two cities are fighting for a hospital that provides free health care to children suffering from severe orthopedic problems and burns, attracting some of the finest surgeons and researchers in the world. Shriners spend $1.7 million a day providing free health care at their hospitals, Shriners spokesman Mike Andrews said.

Gene Bracewell, a Shriner who chaired the committee that has twice recommended moving the hospital to Ontario, said the 80-year-old Montreal facility has outgrown its space.

“You can’t build the future relying on the past,” Bracewell said. “Montreal has a glorious past, but it’s time to look to the future.”

Supporters of London point to a cleanup effort at the site Montreal has set aside for a new Shriners hospital, which is on a contaminated former rail yard. They also argue that centrally located Ontario has a million more children under the age of 18 than Quebec does.

Bracewell said the contaminated land was a large reason the six-person committee chose London. “We’ve got a chance to build on a pristine property that has no contamination on it,” he said.

Quebec, which is bringing a delegation of about 40 people, including the premier, the health minister, three members of the national assembly and the mayor of Montreal, trumpets a proposal to give the Shriners the land for the hospital as part of a $1.6 billion project involving two other hospitals. They insist the site is being decontaminated and is safe.

“London is using false arguments,” said Cathy Rouleau, press secretary for Quebec’s health minister. “There is no way the Quebec government would build a … hospital over dangerous land.”

The last time a convention generated this kind of attention was 1997, Andrews said, when a Shriners hospital moved from San Francisco to Sacramento.

“The whole thing boils down to, can we make a good business decision or will it be emotional? Right now, it’s very emotional,” said Ralph Semb, 64, the chairman of the board that runs the Shriners’ hospitals. “It’s pretty hard to dig up an old, rooted tree and replace it.”

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AP-ES-07-03-05 1640EDT