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"A Family Tradition for 132 Years" PORT PERRY STAR - Tuesday, February 24, 1998 - 7 LETTERS Hospital still needs your donations To the Editor: Questions have been raised by donors to the what the $215,400 figure represents. The commission will continue to reimburse hospital foundations at both Port Perry and hospitals for a percentage of restructuring costs Uxbridge sites, voicing concern about the need to for the next four years. This restructuring enables support the hospital when we have just received the hospitals to reinvest future savings back into restructuring funding. I am writing to emphasize that this money is a direct patient care services. With community support, we will continue to reimbursement. North Durham Health Services serve the communities of Brock, Scugog and spent $255,000 over fiscal 1996/97 to initiate Uxbridge Townships, while working with our restructuring. The money was paid for legal and amalgamation partners - Memorial Hospital, consulting fees and severance payments. Bowmanville, Oshawa General Hospital and ~ Ten management and support staff left the Whitby General Hospital - to ensure access to care organization as a result of the merger of The for our rural communities. Cottage Hospital (Uxbridge) and Community Memorial Hospital, Port Perry. The Health Services Restructuring Commission had committed to reimbursing 85 per cent of eligible costs - which is So: It's okay to be 50 now To the Editor: So it's okay to be 50 today. "7 says a recent television ad. Does that mean that it was- n't okay yesterday? Is this some kind of break through? And why is 50 the limit? Why not 55, or 60, or even 70? Is our acceptance or per- ception of age something we must weigh as though it was part of our social growingtup in a time when maturity sud- denly has little to do with the aging process? Our preoccupation with age is pathetic. It has been and still is a commercially profitable concern in a world where youth - sometimes mindless - is worshiped for itself, and often leads to the scandalous abuse of older but mature generations. Perhaps 50 is a new awak- ening for public acceptance. Perhaps, in a few years, 55 will be a reasonable plateau. Then onward to my decade. I would love to hear it boasted around the world that it's okay to be 70. But by that time I'll probably be 90. I guess I'll never catch up; $000000....."50 today" is okay with me. I'll just lie about how old I am. Owen Neill, Port Perry Guy Kirvan, Chief Executive Officer, North Durham Health Services Witmer's statement rings false To the Editor: bedroom an office. Does it mean Re: Closing of psychiatric the bed is closed? beds There have also been I read with interest Health instances where general hospital Minister Elizabeth Witmer's psychiatric beds have been closed statement about the 1996 mora- to redirect psychiatric bed dol- torium on the closing of psychi- lars to other areas of the general atric beds until adequate com- hospital. munity services were created: It is time the government "This moratorium remains in faces the responsibility of pro- effect." viding health care to the men- On Feb. 10, 1997, I had the tally ill. It is time that tinkering opportunity to meet with the with the health care system is local presidents of the Ontario stopped; it is time the govern- Public Service Employees Union, ment moved to ensure that ade- representing the 10 provincial quate, properly planned, inpa- psychiatric hospitals. In consul- tient and outpatient psychiatric tation with them, I find the min- services are available across ister's statement not quite accu- Ontario. rate. While they may not be closing Joan Gates, psychiatric hospital beds, they President OPSEU may not be filling the bed when Local 331, patients are discharged. Or, in Whitby Mental some cases, you can make the Health Centre Story was inappropriate I was wondering: Does proven to be true, then write. Linda Craig get a blindfold to your story; but this kind of face the firing squad you reporting belongs in the already seem to have set up? National Enquirer, not our Whatever happened to inno- community newspaper. cent until proven guilty? Marilyn Pitts If these allegations are Port Perry Contact the Star at 985-3708 yA by Jeff Mitchell OLYMPIC PRIDE, WAYWARD SENATORS PROUD TO BE A CANUCK: Wasn't that a great show put on by our delegation in Nagano? The Olympics were two weeks of games, guts and glory, and our country came out shining, reaching our previous plateau for medals at the event and surpassing it. Perhaps what's most remarkable is that this comes at a time when we are being warned that the federal gov- ernment is seriously curtailing funding for our athletes, and short-changing the country when it should be backing our chance to bask in the glow of victory at the international level. Here's hoping the feds take notice of accomplishments at the games, and see them as an indication that funding should be preserved. Because the Olympics have served, more than any other single event or symbol, to bring this country together, haven't they? When cheering our athletes on, we didn't stop to consider whether they were from Quebec or Ontario or Saskatchewan. All we cared about was that they were ours, we were represented in them, and for a moment felt -- although we may not have thought it possible any more -- a keen sense of national pride. And that beats the hell out of a nation- wide referendum on a constitutional accord everybody knows is doomed... eh? Anyway: Great games, can't wait for the summer of 2000. Go Canada! SOMETHING'S IN THE AIR: As | write this, the window by my computer is open a few inches, and the air that flows in is cool, but not cold. Out there birds are raising a racket, and they can be seen flitting back and forth among the still-bare branches. Puddles are forming. My kid's bus driver told me about a robin sighting from a friend of a friend. The calendar says spring arrives three weeks from Friday. Things are lookin' up. A DIFFERENT KIND OF OMEN: Don't know if this is a harbinger of spring, or the end of life as we know it on the planet, but Doug Mackie phoned Friday afternoon to say he's found a couple of garter snakes alive and crawling on his farm near Blackstock. The early bird gets the worm... so ... ? THE SENATOR GETS HIS: The strange and sorry tale of Senator Andy Thompson, Durham Region's dubi- ous contribution to the Upper Chamber, continued this week. While he remained holed up in his hacienda South of the Border, his mates here were lining up to condemn him, and kick themselves over not having done it sooner. Can you say Senate Reform? ment by aving flags, along comes a goof tries to make flag waving into a political Bad enough we have to listen to the continual -. whining of our Quebecois neighbors at home... but the Olympics should have been a "politics free zone." ~~ SICKLY SENATOR SUSPENDED Inthe "well it's about time" category, Canada's sickly ~ Thompson was unable to show up for a hearing last arently due to his health, but fellow members didn't buy the excuse and voted to suspend him and his SEA et yea pay, for his chronic absenteeism. half the Senate members showed up Thompson from the chamber, from the lake, that it won't be long until we'll see the water sparkling under the warm spri 'For me, it can't come too soon.