MINOR OPERATIONS MEAN A 216-km TRIP
It's 80 hours a week for McBride's only doctor
The
20c Copy
Citizen
Thursday, October 5,1978 Vol. 22; No. 194 Prince Geo?ge, British Columbia
by JOHN ASLING Citizen Staff Reporter
McBRIDE — The one doctor in this community must work 80 hours a week and patients must travel to Jasper or Prince George for a simple tonsilectomy.
One doctor is just not enough for this village, which has been searching since last November for. a second general practitioner, officials say.
Dr. John Honig, who is filling in for seven weeks for vacationing Dr. Geoff Cowburn who is in England, says there is a desperate need for a second doctor here and before long the village of 2,500 will need a third.
He says the one doctor gets no time off and when vacation times comes, he needs at least seven weeks. And despite the fact that McBride has the “best-equipped hospital of its size anywhere”, many patients are travelling to Jasper or Prince George for simple operations.
When a child has to have his tonsils taken out, he says for example, two doctors are needed and thus this simple operation can’t be done at the 26-bed McBride and District Hospital.
“I think it’s a big problem,” Maurice Bonneville, president of the McBride Chamber of Commerce, said today in a tele-
phone interview. "There’s enough people around to support two doctors.”
Bonneville says the one doctor situation creates a real problem for the hospital in that very few operations can be performed.
It is a waste of a good hospital, he says. It also means a financial problem for the hospital. “If you haven’t got any bodies for the hospital to look after, there’s no money coming in.”
Bonneville says the chamber and the village have been advertising heavily for the past year looking for another doctor without success.
But Dinham Drew, administrator of the hospital, said Wednesday, there has been no major problem at the hospital because of the lack of a second doctor.
He say the hospital’s occupancy rate has dipped only slightly in the past year. “It’s not desperate in the sense that there’s no doctor in town.”
But he adds "It would be better for the community and the hospital if there was another doctor.”
About 90 patients are transferred to Prince George from the McBride hospital in a year and Drew says this figure has not grown substantially since the village’s second doctor left last November.
Meanwhile, Honig can’t understand why patients in nearby Valemount and McBride have to be serviced by Jasper doctors. He says the business should stay in B.C.
Last month an arrangement was worked out so that Jasper doctors could serve patients in Valemount as that community will be without a doctor beginning this month.
The doctors will service the community out of the new public health clinic there.
A Manitoba doctor, Honig says he landed in McBride purely by chance. He says if more advertising were done in that province, communities like McBride would have no trouble getting doctors.
That’s because the doctors’ fees are “much higher” in B.C. and would be an incentive for the Manitoba physicians.
But the 80-hour weeks for Honig are a problem. He says he would not last six months at his current pace, let along the year that Cowburn has served.
College
financing
chgnges
KELOWNA, B.C. (CP) -Education Minister Pat McGeer said Wednesday that funding of post-secondary institutions will change and relieve property owners of the burden of financing them.
The new financial formula will see monies allocated to colleges through academic and occupational training councils, he said. The councils will be established following proclamation of the Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, expected within a week.
McGeer, speaking to Okanagan College administrators, college council, faculty and students, said he hoped colleges will be operating under the act, which replaces the Public Schools Act for Colleges, in 1979.
Monies will come from government general revenue,the councils’ student fees and any public bequests, he said, not the education ministry. Under the act, colleges will be designated independent corporations and will hold title to lands and physical facilities.
Okanagan College principal Ron Jeffels said McGeer told him an equivalent or greater amount of money will be available to colleges.
Colleges have been operating under an amendment to the Public Schools Act.
Transit develops a hitch
FORT McMURRAY, Alta. (CP) - When considering alternatives to bus service most communities look at subways or other forms of rapid transit.
Not so this northeastern boom town —it’s looking at hitch-hiking. It seems that the town can’t afford to extend its bus routes.
Just such a proposal was presented to the town’s board of administrators Tuesday and it approved the idea in principle and told staff to develop the plan.
Ray Seymour, town director of personnel, said in a presentation to the board that one of the main concerns about the plan related to the safety of hitchhikers. But it was about the only method of moving from one area of town to another, unless one was a car owner.
A written summation, prepared by Seymour and senior planner Peter Van Belle, outlined a plan for establishing certain pick-up stations for hitch-hikers. The summation said 11 stations had been chosen where people could wait for a ride. Signs would be erected.
BENNETT HITS TOWN
Citizen photo by Tim Swanky
Fort St. James Mayor Jim Togyi and Premier Bill Bennett confer during Bennett's stop in that village.
LEBANESE CONFLICT
Capital city torn apart
BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian-Ch-ristian violence has torn apart this capital city, and some veterans of the Lebanese conflict say the fighting now is worse than any during the 1975-76 civil war.
The conflict that has destroyed much of the Christian sector of East Beirut is spilling over into the western entertainment and commercial centre, an area that in better times earned Beirut the
name Paris of the Middle East.
The Syrians, now the heart of an Arab League peacekeeping force stationed here, intervened in the civil war that pitted leftist Lebanese Moslems and Palestinians against right-wing Christians whom the Moslems thought had too much political control.
The Syrian move saved the Christians, but they have resisted Syrian attempts to control them.
The Christian quarter has been without water and electricity for a week. Tuesday, the big guns constantly hammering the city knocked out most of West Beirut’s power, plunging it into darkness and cutting all communications with the outside world.
Red Cross supplies are running low as all routes to the eastern sector have been severed.
See also page 5
SPY THRILLER SCRIPT
FBI uncovers plot to steal submarine
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (AP) - It reads like the script for a bestselling spy thriller: board a U.S. nuclear submarine, kill the crew, head for the high seas after firing a nuclear-tipped missile at an East Coast city and then turn the submarine over to a buyer.
The FBI says the plot was real. Two men were arrested Wednesday and a third is being sought.
Edward Mendenhall, 24, of Rochester, N. Y., and Kurtis Schmidt, 22, of Kansas City, Mo., were to be arraigned today before a federal magistrate on charges of conspiring to steal the U.S.S. Trepang, based in New London, Conn. They were being held in lieu of $50,000 bond each.
James Cosgrove, 26, of Ovid, N.Y., was being sought on a similar charge, the FBI said.
Roy Klager, in charge of the FBI’s St. Louis office, said the plot came to light last month when Mendenhall and Cosgrove tried to
The sub they wunted to steal
recruit an undercover agent into a 12-man crew that was to take the Trepang into the Atlantic Ocean, where they would meet an unidentified buyer.
Klager said the two men showed the agent written plans for stealing the sub.
After killing the sub’s crew of about 100, the men allegedly planned to blow up a submarine tender moored alongside the Trepang to create a diversion and to block pursuit by other naval ships at the New London base.
If needed to cover the sub’s getaway, the plan called for firing a nuclear missile at the base or a major East Coast city, Klager said.
The FBI did not say if any city had been selected.
A navy spokesman, Rear Admiral David Cooney, said in Washington, D.C., that such a plot could not have been carried out.
"No 12 people off the street are ever going to operate a submarine like this,” Cooney said.
Gov't to boost homeowner aid
BULLETINS
NEW DELHI (Reuter) — Three Indian doctors announced in Calcutta Thursday night that the world’s second test-tube baby was born there on Tuesday, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
The doctors made their announcement in a television interview.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s first non-socialist government in more than 40 years resigned today in a dispute over the future use of nuclear energy.
by ELI SOPOW
Citizen Staff Reporter
Premier Bill Bennett continued to play Santa Claus on his B.C. Railway tour of the province Wednesday, handing out $590,000 in grants to Prince George during a 30-minute stopover.
Bennett also announced that an across-the-board increase in the provincial homeowners’ grant will be introduced at the next session of the legislature.
He said the grant increase is the best way of alleviating increased property taxation because it gives greatest relief for those in medium-priced homes.
The last over-all increase in the homeowner grant was in March, 1976, when it as raised to $280 from $200 through integration of the school tax removal grant. Homeowners over 65 years of age get $480.
The late-running premier attracted about 50 people to the BCR main terminal here.
A cheque for $335,000 represented the sixth installment of a revenue-sharing grant to the city.
The Kelly Road Community Centre received $96,666 for a joint community - school development for residents in the Hart Highway area.
Total cost of the project is $290,000.
Bennett also announced a grant of $258,556 to the Fort George Museum Society. The grant represents one-third of the cost of constructing a new museum in Prince George.
Earlier in the day, Bennett gave the town of Quesnel a $43,100 cheque representing a revenue sharing payment.
In Fort St. James, the premier continued his policy of personally delivering the revenue sharing cheques by giving village council there $30,000.
Many residents were expecting financial help from the province to help develop a community ski hill.
See also page 3
Barrett comes out swinging
VANCOUVER (CP) -Opposition Leader Dave Barrett, addressing the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) convention Wednesday, fired verbal broadsides at many of his longstanding targets-Premier Bill Bennett and the Social Credit government, the oil companies, the banks, MacMillan Bloedel, the federal Liberals and Conservatives and the local daily newspapers.
Barrett, who has repeatedly challenged Bennett to a televised debate, directed several remarks to the absent premier, who is on a rail tour through central British Columbia.
“I have a message for the premier: If you’re going to call an election, get on with it.
“If you’re not, then shut up and call a fall session of the' legislature. Or are you too frightened to call us back to Victoria?
“I’m not going to call an election. The last time I did, I wasn’t satisfied with the result.” Barrett and the incumbent New Democratic Party were defeated by the Socreds at the polls in early 1976.
TODAY
"Hold rtl I want an arms limitation pact!"
(featured inside)
Tammy
escapes
Country music singer Tammy Wynette, bruised and choking from pantyhose tied around her neck, was found alive after being released by a masked gunman who she said tried to kill her. Page 5.
Playoff fever . . .
The Yankees and Royals are tied and the Dodgers
lead the Phillies. Page 7.
Index
Bridge.................. .............21 Fnmily................... .....34,35
Business.............. .......16,17 Horoscopes........... ...........40
City, B.C............. .....2, 3,15 International........ .............5
Classified............. ........18-25 National................ .............6
.............20 ...........15
........36-10
c
THE WEATHER
J
The forecast for Prince George today is for mainly cloudy conditions with some sunny periods. Friday should be mainly sunny with some cloudy periods.
The expected high today is 14, the low 2. Friday’s forecast high is 16.
The high Wednesday was 14, the overnight low 4, with no precipitation. On this date last year the high was 10, the low -1.
NOW HEAR THIS)
% A Chief Lake Road resident is wondering what’s up with the mail. This week he got three pieces of mail which were postmarked Aug. 29, Sept. 3 and Sept. 12. He said it’s not the first time.
6 People here who think they are watching U.S. television stations over cablevision are only dreaming, if you can believe one official of the CBC. Jack Craine told a hearing that the Canadian network carries a number of U.S. programs to balance the “TV diet" in areas like Labrador City and Prince George, which have no access to cable television.
9 The Prince George Hotel’s new pub has a dress code and intends to stick with it. The manager of a larger downtown hotel was asked to leave because he wasn’t dressed properly So he went and sat in the hotel’s lounge.