Daughter Sarah,

Remembering =

_ Alice Chen-Wing

Alice Chen-Wing died in Mills
Memorial Hospital on February
26th, of melanoma. Alice had
been Director of Nursing at the
hospital from 1968 until 1973.

She interrupted: her career to

devote time to family. and

__ volunteer activities. -

_ by Betty Barton

Husband John Chen-Wing
remembers fondly his introduc-
tion to Alice Uberall. It happen-
ed on the last Friday in April
1969. An associate at Skeena
Secondary School kept telling
John he should meet the “ma-
tron’’ at the hospital. After their
introduction at the home of this
associate and his nurse-wife,
Alice invited John to go fishing.
(She loved the outdoors.) John
had to decline because of a pre-
vious commitment. Their first
date turned out to be a Social
Credit conference with W.A.C.

’ Bennett as the keynote speaker!

That summer, while John was
in Hawaii and Alice was in
Saskatchewan, they correspond-
ed regularly. John spent . that
first Christmas with Alice and
her family, which included four
sisters. He says they all talked at
once and nobody else could get a
word in edgewise. Alice’s
mother and two of her sisters,
Joyce Krause and Luise Keenley-
side, still reside in Terrace with
their families. And John says
Alice had a good regard among
her sisters. But it was her sisters
who : kept everything together
when Alice got sick.

John called Alice a very re-
markable person. She was very
positive, especially with the chil-
dren. She gave them the chance
to grow and learn independence

- and self-reliance. She was very

frugal. John thinks it. stemmed
from living on a farm, during
the depression. Alice would
walk to work to maintain good
health and to save money on
gas. She used the car for pleas-
ure only. She even saved salt and
pepper packets off the planes for
picnics.

The furniture in the Chen-
Wing house dates back 21 years,
when Alice and John were first
married. John says Alice was
not at all ostentatious, but a very
practical person. She was also
the “Original green person’,
focusing on organic gardening.

Alice’s first thoughts were
always for their children, When
she was diagnosed as having
cancer, she felt it important to
inform the children. As a result,
they were involved all the way.
And John says, thanks to Alice,
they’re more in control now.
the eldest,
showed a lot of leadership with
her siblings. Alice felt respon-
sibility and education were of
foremost importance, and she
provided for their education,

Sarah, now {9, is attending a

‘co-op program in Mechanical

Engineering at the University of
Victoria. She was on a work
term in Winnipeg with Northern
Telecom during the spring
semester of 1990.

Lisa, 16, is at Brentwood
College School for Grade 11 this

year. She will be studying in
France this summer with Jo Pat-
terson from Northwest Com-
munity College. Her career
plans include law and work in
the House of Commons.

Ryan, in Grade 9 at Brent-
wood, is active in sports, naviga-
tion and trumpet playing.. He
hopes to become a_ particle
physicist.

Alice loved camping, canoe-
ing and hiking. She and John
did a lot of hiking when they
first met, but he didn’t — and
still doesn’t — like camping.
Alice and the children and
friends would go canoeing on
the lakes’ and on camping
holidays in the national and pro-
vincial parks.

People were important to
Alice Chen-Wing, as demon-
strated through her dedicated
works in the United Church and
with the Vietnamese families
sponsored by the church, Alice
was guide and mentor for the
Liu and Lau families when they
arrived in Terrace. She even

. drove through a red light to get
Cuc Liu to Mills Memorial
Hospital to deliver her baby! If
Cuc had had a daughter, she
says she would have named it
Alice. It was a boy, and she call-
ed him David after then-minister

+

of the United Church, David

Martin.

Alice was well known and lov-
ed throughout the nursing com-
émunity in B.C.-She felt-it-her du-
ty to give them the northern per-
spective. She sat on the RNABC
(Registered Nurses’ Association
of B.C.) Board of Directors, and
represented the Canadian
Nurses’ Association as a
delegate to attend their biennial
convention in Prince Edward
Island. During her absence from
nursing, Alice tutored for the
University of Victoria nursing
program, and interviewed in-
terested applicants to the U Vic
nursing program.

She had left home at 17 to
study nursing at Vancouver
General Hospital. After several
years in the field, she received
her Bachelor of Applied Science
degree from the University of
British Columbia. Her nursing
career included positions at the
United Church Hospital, Queen
Charlotte Islands; University
Hospital, Seattle; Brompton
Chest Hospital, London, Eng-
land; Head Nursing, Com-
municable Diseases, Vancouver
General Hospital; and Nursing
Instructor with the Vancouver
General Hospital School of
Nursing. Alice loved the work
and encouraged young people to
go into nursing.

€

In support of the scientific in-
terests of husband John and her
children, Alice judged the an-
nual Science Fair held each
April, John Chen-Wing has
been teaching biology at.
Caledonia since its opening 21
years ago. He reflects, “‘In a
way, our lives were parallel to
that of the school.’’ Alice and
John met 21 years ago. And they
were both committed to educa-
tion.

Terrace Review — Wednesday, March 28, 1990 A5

Alice Chen-Wing helped to make the quality ¢ of life better for many people in this s community She
died after a long illness February 26.

Ea oe ae Se pend fio,

Regional district wants role
in health care commission

The provincial government seems
to bypass regional districts on
everything from mining roads to
forest and fishing policies. At least

‘that’s what the board of directors

of the Regional District of Kitimat-
-Stikine says at least once a month.
Now a new one has been added --

health care. Premier Bill Vander
Zalm and Health Minister John
Jansen announced Feb. 22 that a
Royal Commission would examine
health care in the province.

The reason? “Tuesday’s federal
budget announcement, with its
unprecedented cutbacks in health

theater.

Block funding to be
explained at meeting

Barry Piersdorff, the secretary-treasurer for School District 88,
will speak on the Ministry of Education’s new block funding
system and its implications for the local district at a public meeting
April 2 starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Caledonia high school lecture

The meeting is being organized by the Clarence Michiel school
parents’ advisory committee. Piersdorff is also expected io have
information on the local board’s preliminary budget.

CBC Prince Rupert to host
open house this weekend

The CBC radio "storefront"
bureau in Prince Rupert will open
its doors to the public March 30
and 31 to let listeners take a look
at live radio.

Everyone is being invited to drop
by, starting at 6 a.m. Friday, to

meet the people who put together '

Daybreak and their guests,
Saturday edition host Neil Gillon
and the crew from the Royal
Canadian Air Farce, who will be
judging the network’s province-
wide ComicTary. contest,

The CBC bureau is at 222 Third
Avenue West in Prince Rupert.

care funding, has led Cabinet to
conclude that it is time for an
independent evaluation of our
current health care system," Van-
der Zalm said at the time, He went
on to say that the commission
would examine utilization, appro-
priateness and the effect of health
care services in the province and
identify possible options to
improve both the cost-effectiveness
and quality of care.

Jansen, though, was given the
bottom line in the release. He
urged the province’s health care
providers and the general public to
participate with the government in
facilitating the work of the comm-
ission. It’s here that the Regional
Hospital District board of directors
has a problem. The feel they are,
in part, health care providers and
they are quite certain that they are
@ part of the general public, but
they apparently haven’t been pro-
vided with a mechanism for pro-
viding input to the commission. .

Feeling that issues such as the
operation of regional health boards
and funding mechanisms are issues
close to their heart, then, the board
feels they have been left out in the
cold once again. To correct this
oversight on the part of the gov-
ernment, they have written a let-
ter to Jansen requesting that a
formal mechanism which would
include them in the consultative
process be put in place. In the
meantime, they wait.

ty

a arceine macer ome

seme ag tee ne ay,