Tthwest Community Colleges

- are. up 40 percent over last year,

but’ college. president Don An-

- derson predicts the final figure
will be more like 15 percent after

this fall’s registration. There is

an unknown factor, though,

that ‘could prove him wrong.
‘The door was closed to many

_ lower mainland students last
' ‘year due toa shortage of space
’ “in'colleges in southwestern B.C.
' —‘NWCC had plenty of seats.
This year for the first time ever,
7 NWCC will join with some of

the other more remote college
| campuses in the province and set
‘Up a registration center at Simon

Fraser University’s downtown

Vancouver Education Informa-

tion Centre. According to
NWCC Bursar. Geoff . Harris

Skeenaview

_-ow “At-that time money was very
oe scarce,” recalls - Piffer.

‘They
(the government) didn’t want to

ce ‘spend money on ‘these ‘poor

‘patients’ as we called them
then.’? He explains that the re-
feral to ‘‘poor patients” didn’t
only refer to what may be
looked on today as slave labor.
‘Many of these people should

never have been admitted to a

mental institution in the first
place says Piffer.:

“They had locked them up
for being drunk or something
and they never got out,” says
Piffer. ‘“That was the way it was

in those days.’’ But he adds, by

the time these patients arrived in
Terrace they had been residents
of mental institutions for so
long they probably weren’t ¢a-
pable of managing their own

lives. Their only future, there-

fore, was to remain institution-
alized for life.

‘They had been out of touch .

with society for so long that I
don’t know if they could actual-
ly have managed on their own,”
he says, but adds, ‘They were
real fine people — all of them.”
After a moment of reflection,
however, he continues by saying
with a hint of a smile, ‘‘Well,
some of them were really crazy
but even they had their sane
moments.”

He remembers some “real old
characters’’ who “‘liked to show

off’. People like “old Drainy’’

who said his mother once tried
to drown him in the privy and,
hating doctors, would put on a

‘‘real show’? for staff members

like head doctor Dr. Gee.
A year after the Home for the
Aged opened its doors, another

150 patients took up residency in:

the east wing of the home which
was under the direction of Har-
old Clifford. Additional staff
arrived with these new patients,
according to McKinnon, but
even then there was still a staff
shortage. A staff of 60 was
responsible for 300 patients —
and there were more patients to
come. ‘‘They gradually loaded
us up,” says Piffer. ‘1 think in
the end we had about 350 there.
It was far too miuch.

. Piffer continues, ‘‘We had
two dining rooms. One on the
‘east side and one‘on :the west
‘and there was no staff to work |

ift them.” As a result, he says,
they had to pick aut thé. better
workers and train ‘them to do

Terrace Review - _ Wednesday, J aly 26, 1989

Sollege seeks: southern: students

nrolment, applications at :

-college Registrar. Brian ‘Lopston ;
is ‘quite excited” and “feels we |

might get a significant number
of students”,

A report from Lopston to the
NWCcC Board of Directors

‘states that East. Kootenay,

Northern Lights and Selkirk col-

leges have joiried the project and ~

he believes that five lower main-
land collges ‘‘will welcome the
opportunity to be able to offer

‘the disappointed student an al-

ternative’, Lopston adds that
Nadine Miller of SFU’s Educa-
tion Information Centre also
views the project favorably —
‘she is also faced with numer-
ous frustrated students each fall
who are looking for alterna-
tives’, .
Lopston says SFU is installing

continued from page 7

work paid waitresses would or-
dinarily do.

It was the same in the laun- -

dry. Under the direction of Jack
Kenyon, the lone staff member
in the laundry in those early
years, patients would take care.
of the tons of soiled linen and
clothing while the home’s truck
driver, Art Mitchell, picked up
and returned the laundry on his
appointed rounds.

Then there was the boiler
room where everyone worked
hard. Piffer remembers the
Telkwa coal supplied by Harold
Smith. ‘It was dirtiest stuff,’
he recalls. And Smith was kept
busy “hauling that
steady’’. The coal-fired furnace
in the boiler room was equipped
with electric motors and augers
that were supposed to
automatically feed the fire but
this system couldn’t keep up
with the demand. ‘‘They had to
keep shoveling that stuff in by
hand because they couldn’t keep
it hot enough,” says Piffer.
“They really had to work in
those days.” —-

There was a good reason that
workers in the boiler room
couldn’t- keep up to the demand,
According to McKinnon. be-
cause of the building’s enor-
mous size and poor insulation,
there was considerable heat ‘loss
and this inefficiency in the sys-
tem was paid for by human
labor.

Fire protection was needed
and the staff. provided this ser-
vice with their own volunteer
fire department and a hand-
pulled “buggy with hoses on
it?’. But this and other situations
at the home, such as the staffing
problems, gradually improved.

The hand-pulled fire buggy was |. .

eventually replaced with a real
wagon and that was later re-
placed with a real fire engine.

The fire engine is now on
display at Heritage Park but
almost everything related to this
part of our heritage has disap-
peared. “I don't know what
they did with it,’’ says Piffer of
the fire wagon. ‘‘I think it was
sitting downtown at one time
and I think they eventually put it
in- a museum or something.”
Maybe at next month’s reunion,
when many of: the one-time
Home for the Aged; Skeena-

view, and Skeenaview Lodge ©

employees get together, some of

these items might be traced. ok

“$ays,

stuff

ee ree
Ta! é

we:

‘three telephone: lines to a room.

at the Vancouver center and
other necessary communications _
equipment will be rented from

SFU’s External Services. Three
people will work in the office, he
says, one for: -admissions and

advising, one trained in registra-

tion processing-and. a financial
aid officer,

_ Lower mainland. students us-
ing the center will-be offered all

possible. assistance. According

to Lopston, student loans will be
processed ‘‘on:the spot”. and an
additional $1, 500 to. $2,000 will
be included for students facing

-extra travel and living costs. He

adds that these students will
have ample time to make the

‘Move to Terrace — classes start

in Terrace on Sept. 11, one week

later than other colleges — and

the college is attempting to keep
transportation costs to a mini-
mum by pre-booking blocks of
seats on Canadian Airlines or
AirBC.

~ Lopston says the office i is set
to open Aug. 30. Langara and
Douglas are two colleges who
expect to run out of space, he
and they predict the
“crunch” will come on Sept. 1.
But unlike last year, students
won’t be left out in the cold —
the staff at the Vancouver center
will be ready and willing to sign
them up.

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Is the Lanfear Hill sidewalk safe? Wire cages support
several sections of the walkway, but other sections such as
the one above, are being examined by Public Works Direc-
tor of Engineering Stew Christensen.

-NWCC vice-chair waits |
to be reappointed —

With the recent resignation of
Northwest Community College
vice-chairman John Morgan,
the college board was required
to elect a new vice-chairman last

Saturday. This happened quick-

ly. Kitimat alderman Joanne
Monaghan was nominated by
John Pousette, followed almost
immediately by a motion from
Elmer Derrick to close the

nominations. But Monaghan’s
win was short lived.
College bursar Geoff Harris
informed the board that Monag-
“han’s board appointment had
expired, and the provincial gov-
ernment hadn’t yet got around

‘to renewing it,

To this hitch in the proceed-
ings, Prince Rupert director Gail
Bergen suggested the college

write the government advising

them of the nomination and
suggesting that ‘‘it’s time they
renew her appointment’. Ac-
cording to Bergen, there are
other directors who have not yet
had their appointments renewed
and areas in. the NWCC region
who don’t even have a represen-
tative. Harris verified this by°
pointing out that the Hazeltons
and Smithers are without repre-
sentation.

‘We have to be very con-

Terrace Peaks C
Kinsmen Club :

cerned,’’ Harris told the board
when talking about the eastern
portion of the region. ‘‘That’s
how CNC (the College of New
Caledonia in Prince George) lost
Smithers. They didn’t pay atten-
tion.’’ Harris called the whole
system of government appoint-

ments to college boards ‘‘ineffi-

cient’” and board chairman

Hans Wagner suggested it’s time

they go ‘‘on the record’’ and ask
the government to put a pro-
gram in place which would ad-
dress the problem. In the mean-
time, Monaghan’s nomination is
being held in abeyance until her
appointment is renewed. -

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