WEDNESDAY November 21, 2012 Vol. 27•No. 93 ••• $1.25 inc. H.S.T.
COMOX VALLEY
OPINION
SPORTS
A veteran of the Angola War now living here recounts his ordeal to cope with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. page A26
Raiders earn trip to provincial volleyball championships. page B8
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Alberta honours Lloyd Among eight recipients of the Alberta Order of Excellence Scott Stanfield Record Staff
LIGHTING THE TREE Moonlight and Magic on Friday launched weeks of WinterFest activities in downtown Courtenay. They continue this Friday night with Pamela Tessmann and friends at the Zocalo Café. PHOTO BY ERIN HALUSCHAK
Comox Valley-raised Griffin Lloyd is among eight recipients of the Alberta Order of Excellence, awarded to people for exemplary records of service on local, provincial, national and international stages. It’s the highest honour the province has to offer. While working overseas as a geologist, Lloyd became involved in the crusade against poverty and disease. He later helped form the Calgary-based partnerSHIP Society, which delivered medical supplies to clinics in Third World countries. The society also has an office in Bangkok, Thailand. “It became apparent that there were a lot of people in pretty desperate situations, particularly in Laos and Cambodia,” Lloyd, 84, said in an interview this week. “What triggered it originally was the work I did in a Thai refugee camp for people that had been forced out of Cambodia.” The so-called death camp was true to its name, with 500 or 600 deaths per day for a time. “It was pretty horrible,” said Lloyd, who spent several weeks at the camp in 1979. “That really alerted me to the fact that there were people in the world that had things happen to them that could not be
COMOX VALLEY NATIVE Griffin Lloyd, seen at his Comox home, earned the highest honour Alberta has to offer for humanitarian work overseas. PHOTO BY SCOTT STANFIELD
avoided. People had nothing to do with the circumstances, just overwhelming disaster one after another, and that pushed them out of the country.” He revisited Southeast Asia with a packsack of medical supplies including needles, which were nonexistent in a Laos hospital. From there, the concept of partnerSHIP took shape, eventually anchored by a donated warehouse that was filled with supplies in relatively short time. “Canadians are remarkably generous,” Lloyd said. “We got overwhelmed with stuff. We concentrated on medical supplies, educational supplies and what we call humanitarian, which is
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whatever was leftover that people might need ... We grew, and people were more than willing to volunteer their time.” partnerSHIP ran about 20 years, during which time it supplied seven hospitals, four operating rooms and seven clinics. Most supplies went to Cambodia and some to Nepal. “In order to get along with the government, we could not say that it was for any particular group of people,” Lloyd said. “It had to be non-religious ... It was an interesting exercise.” He figures partnerSHIP supplied about $20 million worth of medical stuff, while the amount of volun... see AWARD ■ A2
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