Lake Scugog Historical Society Historic Digital Newspaper Collection

Port Perry Star, 4 Nov 1986, p. 17

The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, November 4, 1986 -- 17 Take a Look Back CP. RL Station, Myrtle, Ont. FER aE own NN SARE Th NN Photograph c courtesy of Whitby Historical Society This week's photograph is an ex- cellent shot of Myrtle Station as it ap- peared in 1906. The shot is taken look- ing east and shows a dirt and gravel Highway 12 in the foreground. The sta- tion was originally built at Myrtle when the CPR line was put through linking Toron- to and Peterborough in 1884. The station was badly scorched when a nearby grain elevator burned down, and was finally demolished in 1974. The present smaller. station was constructed almost on the same site to replace the old one. This week's column will hardly be a sur- prise if you read my little ditty last week, but that's OK. because I still feel the subject mat- ter is worthy of the space. ~ Let'ssay itis a Friday afternoon, your ear is sore and your doctor's office is closed until Monday morning. What do you do? Tough it out, or sit in a hospital emergency room, pro- bably feeling a little foolish among really sick people, because you know deep down all you need is a prescription for some form of an- tibiotic. But without that medication, you also know your ear ache will continue, and make you miserable for the next three days. Another option to this dilemma is appear- ing now in a number of Canadian cities: a walk-in medical clinic that's open until late at night- 11 p.m. or so, including weekends - where a doctor will see you without an ap- pointment. As mentioned previously, the ser- vice costs you nothing if you are covered by OHIP. If not, you can charge your visit to your credit card. In the United States, there are some 25,000 walk-in medical clinics, many of them fran- chises. Privately run medical clinics are already a familiar sight in shopping malls in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, and more recently have popped up in Regina, Van- couver and yes, even Toronto, although I have not been able to find out exactly where they are at the time of writing. - One of the newest I recently read about is the Vancouver-based Care Point Medical Centre. It is even listed on the Vancouver . Stock Exchange with its investors coming not only from across Canada, but from the United States and United Kingdom as well. President and founder of Care Point, William Lightbody, recently opened his first clinic in Vancouver, and plans to have four more in the city before the end of the year. He is also eying farther horizons, and anticipates moving into Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Viewpoint by ROXANNE REVELER Under his operation, doctors pay 40 per- cent of the fee received from the provincial medical plan back to the clinic. In return, the doctors don't have to pay for support staff, rent, equipment, or administration costs. This arrangement, according to Lightbody, frees doctors to do what they do best .... practise medicine. You know, the more you think about it, the more these clinics make sense, especially in today's world of two-career families and single parent families where getting to the doctor's office during normal business hours _ is next to impossible. As a result of this, up to 80 percent of the cases handled in hospital emergency wards are not classified as urgent, says Lightbody, who worked in hospitals for 25 years, in- cluding a 12 year stint as administrator of Sur- rey (BC) Memorial Hospital. It also makes sense, that if these clinics take care of "minor" problems, such as said earaches, flu, sore throats and minor burns and cuts, emergency rooms will be able to pay more attention to the serious cases. Many hav: pointed an accusing finger (mainly medical - associations) that the clinics will not provide the continuous medical care of a family physician. But that's not the point. They are not trying to replace the fami- ly doctor. They are not saying "come to us all the time." As far as the accusation that the clinics provide inferior medical care .... hogwash! All doctors in Canada are qualified and licensed, and because the clinics are new, they will be under intense scrutiny from both the public and the medical profession. Since the medical clinics are a private business, there is also an added incentive to do well. They are well aware that the public does not have to come to them, and that if they do not prove they are good doctors, they will have no patients coming to their doors at all. Turn to nage 18 Reflections of a golden age by Mabel M. McCabe Remember When? Halloween is over and now we have entered the time called Ad- vent. It used to be solemnly followed by all Christians but is now just a time of bad weather. Have you noticed how many of the tried and true rituals we had when we were children have fallen by the wayside of modernization? | recall the hours spent in church preparing ourselves for the great feast of Christmas. That is what Advent was all about. We sacrificed some of our pleasures to be able to accept the wondrous gift that the Christ child would bring. | suppose that sounds ridiculous now but it was good in many ways besides religious. We ate less by fasting and therefore we lost - weight. We cut back on the number of picture shows we attended and saved money. Oh! There were many ways we became better for remembering this season. Now life just rolls on and people carry on with their lives as usual. | think it would do us all good to go back to the idea of fasting and saving before we find ourselves completely in hock with gift shopping. You know, it was nice and quiet sitting in a church and meditating on. the lives we led then. I'm sure it would be a great benefit to all to do that now. You don't have to go to a church, just settle back in a comfortable chair in your living room and close your eyes. Once you find the key to clearing your mind of all the clutter and fuss of the daily grind you will be amazed at how good you feel. The mind can take you on fantastic trips to places undreamed of if you let it. After ten or fifteen minutes you can go back to your every day duties completely refreshed. I've found this method a great help when | have trouble with the old ticker. Just sitting still and relaxing helps a lot. I'm not giving anyone a cure all, but | think the idea is that we should slow down once in a while. It's a trick that makes you feel you're not just wasting time. Cute eh? | really hate to see the winter come and yet that first snowfall is still a thrill. How complex we are! | just find it a chore to have to put on all the warm clothes needed to keep warm outdoors and then | get to a Plaza and nearly smother. | don't know what the answer is to this dilemma so if any of you have discovered it, let me know. It is now the season of death throughout nature and it's sad to see, but soon that blanket of snow will fall and for a few moments, things will be beautiful. Remember when the snow was not turned into goopy gray slush and remained on the fields and streets with diamonds shimmering on it as the moon rose on cold nights? Those diamonds of mystery that we recall, our grandchildren will never see, more's the pity. All that beauty has been forfeited to the motor car and progress. What a thrill if we could take all the little ones on a trip back in time to see the things we have locked away in our books of reverie. They too would discover that all strides forward are not always for the best ... New legislation brings prepayment of child tax by Scott Fennell, M.P. To provide timely assistance to oy Tame low-income Canadian families, our government has introduced an amehdment to the Income Tax Act, (Bill C-11) to allow for the prepay- ment of the Child Tax Credit. This amendment will allow the govern- ment to prepay a portion of the Child Tax Credit that would otherwise by payable only at tax time the follow- ing Spring. The tax credit allows low and middle-income families with an an- nual income of less than $15,000, with a refundable tax credit. It is ex- pected that over 725,000 families with a total of 1.3 million children will qualify for the prepayment. For 1986, the amount of the prepayment will be $300 per child, which is approximately two-thirds of the full credit, ($454). The re- maining amount, if any, will be paid after the 1986 tax return is filed in 1987. For every $100 of family in- come over $23,500, the credit will be reduced by $5. In cases where there are no taxes payable, the credit will ly allowance be refunded, again benefiting those families with low incomes. No application will be required for the prepayment, and payments will be made to the recipient of the fami sometime in November. Under the present regulations, recipients receive their benefits after filing their income tax returns in the spring. In the past, many families have gone to tax dis- counters to obtain their refunds earlier, but now this prepayment will reduce the need for tax refund discounting. Legislation has also been introduced to restrict the amount which may be taken by a tax discounter. of a tax refund. Other legislation will be introduc- ed to provide a new refundable Sales Tax Credit of $50 per adult and $25 per child for families with an in- come of less than $15,000. This will also benefit low-income Canadians, many of whom are elderly. Scott Fennell is the Member of Parliament for the Riding of Ontario. EE --------_--_---

Powered by / Alimenté par VITA Toolkit
Privacy Policy