PAGE 2, THE HERALD, Wednesday, July 12, 1978 Mills Memorial Hospital: Space Age Technology in The Boondocks ° 7 | . There can be no arguing the matter. Terrace and district is indeed fortunate - lucky might be an even more appropriate term - at having the medical plant contained within the spacious structure of Mills Memorial Hospital. Whoever “Mills”? was (I couldn't find mention of itin the well produced annual report, but I do intend to find out) -- that person’s memory is associated with a most useful medical centre serving an area where such services are vital to all the inhabitants. Many, J am sure, have good reason tolink the word “Mills” with the saving of life, the restoration of their health and the arrival of their babies with fond recollection. Monday, I had an opportunity to meet the highly enthusiastic and optimistic administrator of the Milis Memorial Hospital, John Allen. He is the man responsible for working, he says, with a “first rate team of hospital staff, trustees and auxiliary” numbering about 250 people. He is also largely responsible for seeing the budget which last year (a 15 month pericd) was $6,300,000. It would be interesting to know how very few persons in the Terrace district are aware of the magnitude of the Mills Memorial Hospital operation and the impact it has on the com- munity. “Figures can lie -and liars can figure.” Still, a payroll to the 200 employees puts one quarter ofa million dollars each month into the community, - $3 milliona year. The hospital has beds for just OTTAWA OFFBEAT -puteriz over a hundred patients, and during the past year has’ had a higher occupancy rate - somewhere around 80 percent much of the time. To feed these 80 or so, plus the 200 staff in the staff cafeteria, is quite a food purchase item within the community and, says John Allen, the policy is to purchase locally wherever possible. As our little group, Monday afternoon, began an hour long tour of the hospital building, with Carol Mix of the Kitimat weekly, camera in hand recording it on film, I was inundated with im- pressions of the seeming endless amount of scientific equipment the hospital has acquired - much of it quite new. One small room that we passed, for example, seemed just about filled with a single com- accounting machine, ‘That replaces two staff persons, alone’ the administrator commented as we looked in the open door... Noticing the side cover was off, exposing masses of variously coloured wires and assorted miniaturized bits and pieces I had a momentary vision of a bookkeeper disembowelled, helplessly awaiting emergency care- and I half expected to see . On and on and on we went-- past an ‘‘old” giant X-ray machine - “good for the rougher work.” At one side of the room was a visual recording device that fed in to a T.V. sereen. The next large room held a much more technologically advanced (translation: more expensive) X-ray, I was told, but, since it probably cost a hundred Where The Priorities Are Ottawa,- Aw well, it was only to be expected, wasn’t it? Treasury Board President Robert Andras murmuring, sorry folks, but it's not possible to cut federal spending as quickly as the taxpayers might fancy is necessary to keep inflation under some semblance of control. Mind: you, the Federal Aristocracy — the privileged Bureaucratic Establishment with its automatic salary increments and indexed pensions ~ did manage, in its own peculiar way, .to spend less. That is, not spend less actually, but rather spend less than it initially intended spending. You see, Mr. Andras explained, we cut spending by holding down to a mere 10 percent the increase we had planned. Now isn’t that just dandy — save by spending 10 percent more. _. Robert: Andras seems proud of it, but the Opposition charges that the spending has run 10 percent more through ‘waste, incompetence and mismanagement.” We could have held the increase to three in- stead of 10 percent, alibis Mr. Andras, except that to have done it would have been to “‘deprive the underprivileged of benefits.” --He was speaking, he added, of “social programs.” Like pensions maybe? Not to forget that both Public Works Minister Judd Buchanan and Welfare Minister Monique Begin have both publicly warned — Buchanan on the platform and Begin in the Commons -- that pension cuts are not out of the question if the government is going to practise restraint. The Opposition collectively - and Con- servative MP Bob Howie of New Brunswick’s York-Sunbury individually -- have branded this not-se-velled threat as “bureaucratic black- mai J . The way he sees it, “‘vengeful bureaucrats, resenting any interference with the expansion of their spending empires, threaten the defen- celess, the pensioners and other beneficiaries of social programs.” . And knowing from long experience the way the rulers of “Fat City’’ work, that theory is realistic enough to be scary. a CACC ge SL _THIS WEEK yey, = from Ottawa Tona Campagnolo Canada is investing - in a major way - in alternate sources of energy. - The extent of our government’s commitment to lessen our dependence on our conventional energy supplies, such as oil, natural gas, coal, and hydro-electricity, was clearly indicated by last week’s announcement by my cabinet colleague, Energy, Mines and Resources Minister Alastair Gillespie, of a $380 million research and investment program into alternate energy sources during the next five years. BIOMASS CONVERSION The major elements of this important program are forest biomass conversion and solar energy. In addition though, work will be done in other alternate energy fields including utilization of geothermal energy (hotsprings), and wind- generated energy. All this, of course, is in ad- dition to our country’s very large commitment to developing unconventional aspects of our traditional energy resources, such as the oil sands of northern Alberta. Biomass conversion is perhaps the least known alternate energy concept; but it is the one with the greatest potential use in our area. In very basic terms, biomass conversion involves the conversion of the energy stored in plant material If the bureaucracy “and the government it runs,” says Bob Howie, ‘‘is really serious about cutting its spending, how about the frills?” What frills, for instance. Well, away. back last November Bob Howie asked the same pension-threatening Judd Buchanan how much his department was spending on what Public Works calls ‘interior landscaping.” He got his answer just the other day. — For corridors lined with potted palms, offices green with philodendron and other foliage, and interior walls cascading with English ivy: $740,485.91. uo In just one year. Once, just a couple of years ago, the Con- federation Building in which Bob Howie has his offices looked like a botanical garden crossed © with the Amazon jungle. It was so redolent with tropical plant life that the Honorable Member from York-Sunbury was embarrassed, and more worrisome, horrified that “one of the boys from down home” might see the glory of it all. . He went to work with his verbal machete and Public Works in self-defence cleared the un- dergrowth of all but $30 worth of plants. “A small victory,” crows Bob Howie, ‘against terrible odds in our war against ‘The Mad Hatters of Ottawa’ who landscape everything that doesn’t move and entertain every one who does — at taxpayers’ expense, of course.” So he demanded — and finally was given —a region-by-region listing of the cost of “interior landscaping” of federal property. | And guess who gets by far the biggest share of the $740,585.91 tropical finery. Of course. Quebec. For $494,906.92, most of it spent in Montreal. Second - oh, the shame of it - the National Capital (including Hull, Quebec) at $149,882.80. If you're wondering who got the rest, and what about the Maritimes, the Prairies and the West Coast, well! For the West: $4,449.76. The Maritimes: $1,450.00, all of it in Halifax. And B.C,: $935.00. Sort of shows you Ottawa’s priorities, what? Alternate Energy to a form suitable for use as a Sores of power. One of the major potential soiirees of plant materia! suitable for conversion is our extensive forest cover. Proper development on this concept could make our area of northwestern B.C. a major energy source! : VANDERHOOF EXPERIMENT One alternate energy concept which is in- cluded in Mr. Gillespie’s announcement has already been tried -- on an experimental basis -- in Vanderhoof. Last year, the Plateau Mills sawmill received a $220,000 grant from the federal government to enable,it to construct a specially designed wood burner adapted to capiure and use heat -- in the dky-kilning process tha! vould otherwise be lost:*The experiment has proven to be very successful, and the burner is now going to become a permanent part of the company’s equipment. The importance of this experiment is that, aside from producing a very clean heat (com- pared to traditional oil-fired burners), wood burners use waste wood products for fuel, in- stead of the oil and natural gas used by virtually all of our existing pulp and paper and sawmill operations, ‘ dollars a look (or because it was being used at the time) we were spared a peek at it, As I was busy trying to catch my breath having just heard the cost, it was just as well I didn’t get to see it - or I might have needed its services since it could do everything except sing ‘‘O Canada” in In- nuiteitut - our next official language in the N.W.T. - Somewhere in the bowels of the building (1 prefer that word to the medical term) having passed a few acres of one floor “ear-marked for future requirements” was not the urology department, as one would have expected, buta quite new psychiatric wing. This addition allows the hospital to provide, along with the services of a resident psychiatrist (Perhaps the only such specialist in the entire Pacific Northwest) regional psychiatric and pathology services for the first time. Other glimpses during the tour enabled Ms.. Mix and I for the first time to observe the seemingly well equipped facilities for providing regional services including Paediatrics, Urological surgery, Dietetics; Physiotherapy, Gynecology, Radiology, and internal surgery. The main burst of additional construction and additions to the original building of 1961 was an — on-going affair that apparently lasted until December 1977 - six months ago. With the millions and millions of dollars in new plant and up-to-date technology, in a hinterland region - such as Terrace is reputed to be located, a a= LETTERS | is difficult to believe Administrator John Allen's assurance that fully trained personnel, who know how to use and maintain the highly sophisticated equipment are on staff, making of all of it. ; =. eS theraster of 16 specialists on resident staff, of a total of some 32 doctors gives an almost un- believable 1:1 ratio which most other hospitals in the Northwest must surely envy. According to Allen, staff morale is excellent, and Mills Memorial has a good reputation with the various societies associated with riedical practice and care in the major cities of the South. In fact, Allen places ‘“‘his" hospital about the fifth from the top of all hospitals in the province for quality of patient care. Allen is confident the constant concern for improving that quality is always uppermost in the minds of the staff and of the various boards and administrators. My last recollection, before having to cut short my part in the tour to meet news deadlines, was some extremely cleverly executed, well drawn and imaginative cartoons in colour on the walls of the children’s section. These murals, I was told, were produced by local sign painter and well known artist and cartoonist, Lee Roberts. This was a good indication and a graphic example, I thought, of community interest and volunteer involvement in the operation of the hospital; the institution which is indeed involved with all of us, in one way or another, 24 hours a day, from birth to death. ‘Wants to know when store will be back * Letters I have heard lots of In all the years I've terland | oe te x 4 4 en Editor, I'm writing in regards to giving my views about one business Terrace is sadly going to’ be withoutt I'm referring of course to “Winterland Health Food Store”. I'm concerned about Winterland. I used to shop there and enjoyed the fact that I could buy a wide array of books not to name their good selection of health foods & crafts. rumours that Winterland will ‘not be operating any‘ more, If this Is true then [ would like the owners of Winterland store to verify this by a letter to your paper. It seems a sad fact when such a good store such as Winterland’ has to go in the Terrace area. Lo I now have to shop for my health foods in Smithers or Kitimat for the things I want. (which I'd prefer not to do.) shopped at Winterland, they were the only folks I know who would always say good morning to you and go out of their way tohelp youwhichis more than I can say for other stores here in town. Their store, their service and cheerful. attitude will long be remembered by myself, I can only hope they will commence operating again. Terrace will never be the same without Win- Yours truly, A loyal fan “Genius is patiance." Buffon Environment Top Concern in W. Coast Decision Dear Dr. Thompson: Thank you for your letter of March 30, with which you. provide us with your final Teport of the West Coast Oil Ports Inquiry. We wish to take this opportunity to extend our appreciation to you and your staff for the valuable work which you have performed. . In the press statement of February 23, 1978, issued by Cabinet, it was stated that the Federal Government sees-no need fora West Coast olf port now or in the foreseeable future and doubts that the benefits of establishing such a port would be sufficient to offset the danger of risking a major oil spill. We would like to point out that, in reaching our decision, the need for a West Coast oil port was not potential for damage to the environment and to the West Coast fishing industry was also an important con- sideration. In your final report you have highlighted limportant concerns that were raised during the course of your Inquiry. These concerns, particularly as they relate to the management of tanker traffic in southern British Columbia waters and to the status and extent of oil spill contingency planning, are also major concerns of our respective Departments. You may be assured that action is now being taken by the Federal Government on these matters. For example, federal Regulations and Guidelines . under = the Fisheries Act with respect to oil refinery operations are the sole criterion used. The currently being — im- = Z_ wave zs == | piScove REP } ae Yn —— —s ———. AMERICA / S-. a = . n — =} i.e Some === plemented by the Fa- vironmental Protection Service. EPS is also reviewing the need . to develop federal effluent eontrols for bulk terminals. In closing, may we again express our appreciation for your efforts on behalf of the Government of Canada. General Office - 635-6387 Circulation - 635.4357 TERRACE/KITIMAT | ‘daily herald PUBLISHER...Lourie Mallett B MANAGING EC!TUR...Ernest Senior ~ REPORTERS...Donna Vallleres (Terrace-Thornhilll Published every weekday at 3212 Kalum St., Terrace, B.C, A member of Varifled Circulation. Authorized as second class mall. Registration number 1201. Postage paid In cash, return postage guaranteed. ; NOTE OF COPYRIGHT The Herald retains full. complete and sole copyright. many advertisement produced and-or any editortal or thategraphic content published In the Herald. Reproduction is not permitted without the written # barmission of the Publisher, Yours sincerely, Romeo LeBlanc Minister of Fisheries Otto Lang, Minister of Transport Len Marchand, . Minister of the En- virenment ~ Published by Sterling Publishers Te pe ee _.