Our community hospital
It is not a hopeful cause. Since that February day in 1998 when the shiny new hospital corporation took form to administer four hospitals in the region, Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital has been on a slow, steady march to oblivion. To nothing. With every significant decline, this community has rallied in defence of its […]
The expendables
So why? Why do it? Why travel a couple of hundred kilometres down the road to protest wrong-headed decisions about our community hospital to folks who are clearly not listening? Folks who toil in isolation in hushed meeting rooms believing they know better about health care in our community? What is the value in complaining […]
Still no answers
They were horrific crimes—vulnerable children victimized and abused by the people entrusted to care for them. Put in harm’s way by a government agency and its officials whose job it was to protect them—to look after them. Two foster parents are already in jail; another has been sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence pending appeal. […]
The list
Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure List is a rather crude measuring stick. As a friend and faithful reader is quick to point out when the Sunshine List is mentioned in these pages and elsewhere, it offers a narrow, and somewhat voyeuristic, view into the business of our public institutions. His chief complaint is that the […]
Fence line
Judging by the long lineups of folks waiting for the sweet taste of freshly boiled maple syrup at many Prince Edward County venues over the weekend, Maple in the County was another brilliant success in 2013. Rarely do the woodlots and farm lanes host so many folks young and old as they do when the […]
Arbitrary power
We cannot be happy, without being free, that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property, that we cannot be secure in our property, if without our consent, other may, as by right, take it away… JOHN DICKINSON, LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANNIA Wandering through a museum last week I came across […]
Alien species
Sylvia Davis has a peculiar job. She is paid by the Ministry of Environment to argue that there is nothing particularly valuable, salvageable or even worthwhile about the environment. Or, at least, not so much that the animals and plants who live there, or their genetic descendants, won’t recover after decades of abuse and industrialization. […]
Late night caller
The phone rings. It’s late. Your son is calling. The connection to his cell phone is poor. It is hard to make out what he is saying. Something’s wrong. There has been an accident—he is away from home and he needs money. Right away. Has this happened to you yet? It will. It is only […]
Hospital-eating disease
Where is the explanation? Where is the justification? Before one more scalpel or tongue depressor is removed from the Picton hospital QHC must explain why it has chosen yet again to cut disproportionately from this hospital. And how it arrived at this conclusion. These answers they owe to this community. But they must also answer […]
Dawn’s early light
Kent Hawkins would be pleased I think. He along with a handful of others fought the lonely, and often bitter, fight against industrial wind turbines a decade ago in Prince Edward County. An engineer by training and by inclination, Hawkins occupied himself in the realm of fact and data. From his North Marysburgh home, he […]