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Ty POE TaN Re NE EAGLE RCRA J) 5 3 A Wash OT EE Re RA LEE ah » Let It Fly As if Ontario Minister of Health Dennis Timbrell doesn't have enough problems on his hands these days what with physicians dropping out of OHIP and so on, he is also faced with the decision this week oi" whether to continue the emergency helicopter ambulance service. : Pp March 31 marks the end of the.18'month experi- ment which cost in the rieighbourfood of $1.3 million. That is 'a lot of money, even by today's inflated standards, and when the Ministry of Health started the program, officials made it clear that a careful evaluation would be made at the end of the experimental period. 5 How does one put a price tag on a human life? That in a nutshell is what the situation boils down to. The helicopter service has been used more than 200 times, and it has saved lives. In a recently published report, Mr. James Fallis of : the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, cited one go -- case involving a premature baby. Without the speed ; of the helicopter service, the infant likely would have suffered permanent brain damage due to lack of oxygen. Had that happened the tyke may have i : ; required institutional care for the rest of his life at a / A AN _ cost estimated at $800,000. 7 Z While facts and figures are sometimes impressive, and statistics can be used to argue pro or con just about anything, surely it is the measure of a civilized society in Canada's most wealthy province that dollars and cents would not even enter. into this question. ' The technology is available, the benefits are real ' enough, it works, it should be used. In fact, the argument today should not be whether to make the service permanent, but how to expand it so that people living in more remote areas of the province hy . can have speedy access to medical technology in "emergency situations. Let us hope that when Mr. Timbrell and his colleagues in the Ministry of Health make their decision this week, they are guided not by dollars and cents, but by human need and compassion. It is all very well for governments to put price tags on new highways, sewer and water projects and so on, but surely an issue like this is not quite in the same category. ~ ; % 7) o 7 ® NN ND N NN N ARN AY NAN A rT -- 3 GV "1s rere A PLUMBER IN THE HOUSE P " oe NL a a a 8 wy FA, AALS) ARAN or as oR Nr, od ~~ La rR Sr JX 1 bill. Ar Un Ae - ore BD ATE . x wy to me as it did a month ago. Comfortable. = we got rid of that old dining-room' suite, CS th AL wey WA pe) - WE) RSs AH! SPRING Like most people in this country with any intelligence, I welcome the advent of spring, which in Canada consists mainly of mud, slush, cold rain and colder winds: It is the end of that suicidal season in which we get more and more depressed, irritable, and bone-weary of living in a land - where the national sound symbols are the wet sniffle and the barking cough, the national sight symbols are the filled-in driveway and the rusting fender. It's a trying time. For years, I've advocated a mid-February holiday to save the national psych from self-destruction. I've suggested calling it National Love Day, the third Monday in February, a day to love your neighbour, your neighbour's wife, yourself, and-life, not necessarily in that order. But I've been blocked, year after year, by , politicians, who fear the opponents might score a victory if it were named Sir John A. MacDonald Day or Sir Wilfred Laurier Day; and the industrialists afid business com- munity, who blanch -with terror at the thought of paying their employees for one | smiley PUSS more non-productive day in the year. Hell, a third of their employees' days are non- productive anyway. throw in a bonus. - Yes, I welcome spring, but there's one aspect of it that I very nearly loathe. That's when the first yellow sun begins to filter through those murky storm windows, which we daren't take off until mid-May. It isn't the sun that bothers me. It's the Old Battleaxe. She throws away her survival kit, the cataracts are peeled from her eyes, and she starts driving me out of my skull. "Bill Smiley, look at those drapes!" I look. They look just fine to me. Same old ones we had in January. Green and gold, turned to a sort of grold with cigarette smoke and hot air from the ancient furnace, but perfectly serviceable drapes. . "Look at that rug. Filthy! Look at the chesterfield. The Boys have ruined it: jam, bananas, yoghurt! Look at that woodwork. It was off-white: in the fall, and'now its off-black! The wall paper is disgusting!" Well, I'look up from my paper with every demand, and everything looks just the:same They may as well Warm. Lived-in. I venture such an opinion. It is met with a torrent of abuse, self-pity, and materialistic avariciousness, "You don't care, do you? You'd live in a pig-pen, wouldn't you? Other men help their . wives keep the place decent, don't they? Have you no eyes in your head? Aren't you ashamed of this "wreck" room that used to be our living-room?"- Faced with a barrage of rhetorical ques- tions, I shift uneasily and answer, "Yes", or sometimes, "No". I never know what to Say, but it's always the wrong thing. Frankly, I. don't care. And, yes, I would live in a pig-pen, if nothing else was available. And no, other men don't help their wives keep the place decent. Not decent men. And yes, I have eyes in my head, two of them, one apt to be black after this column appears. And no, I'm not + ashamed of the wreck room. I know who wrecked it, and I love them just the same. And if visitors don't like it, they can go and visit someone else, with a real rec"room. It is confusing, is it not? : ' However, I am an amendable chap. I don't kick a dog, just because he bays at the moon. I don't kick a woman, just because she begins raving .when the March sun filters into the dugout whére we've spent the winter. I merely blink benignly, start talking supportively. Yes, we should have new drapes. How much? Yes, we should have a new chesterfield. How much? Yes, its time which we bought second-hand for $100 20 "whole house redecorating. How much? - $8,000. I - arrived at an impasse. years ago. How much for a new 'one? Certainly, the rugs need cleaning-and the ) mind that we have to borrow from the bank to pay the income tax. That we have two cars which we could sell in a package deal, to an experienced mechanic;--. for $400. That if we don't have some brickwork done, the whole house will fall down, and we'll be sitting there, in full view, on our new chesterfield. do I suggest' that she save money from teaching her piano pupils, pay back-the $1,000 she has spent on long-distance phone. calls toher relatives, and take a job as a © cleaning™lady for a year, and all will be doozy. New everything. . She counters with arrows about the booze bill, the cigarettes account, and all the money I gamble away on lotteries. I remind her gently that if she hadn't spent a cool thousand on gold chains last summer in Switzerland, we'd be in clover. -And so it goes. , After a week or two of this, we have The sun keeps shining, something" important, like the children crops up, and we sail happily into a new year, with the wreck room in tact: warm, comfortable, lived-in. Doesn't cost a nickel. And you know something? Nobody cares. It 0. 7 Remind out to somewhere around Argyle Ny Ltd.