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RELENTLESS REBELS
Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dead at 91 C7
Red Deer downs Regina 5-1 for eighth-straight win B6
CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM
THURSDAY, DEC. 6, 2012
BETHLEHEM WALK
HEALTH INQUIRY
ER ordered to treat ‘VIPs’ faster: docs BY TIM COOK THE CANADIAN PRESS EDMONTON — An Alberta emergency room doctor says medical staff in a busy ER were once pressured to provide care for a “VIP” ahead of a waiting room full of very sick people. Dr. Paul Parks told a pub- SHERMAN DENIES lic inquiry Wednesday that BEING A ‘FIXER’ A3 the order came from an executive at the University of Alberta hospital in Edmonton in the fall of 2007. “The executive on call called down to the triage nurse and essentially indicated that there was a VIP in the waiting room and that VIP should be moved into an emergency bed immediately and taken care of,” testified Parks, who is now the chief emergency physician in Medicine Hat, Alta. The ER was snarled with patients and the nurse pushed back, Parks said. The best that could be done was to re-evaluate the person to see if the ailments merited being moved ahead. They didn’t. The executive called back. “The tone was definitely not friendly ... there was a repeated call again where the gist of the conversation was, ‘What the heck are you guys doing down there? What is that VIP doing still in the waiting room?”’ The executive ordered that the person’s family doctor be called to the hospital to provide treatment — something Parks said emergency staff would never do. Neither the VIP nor the executive was named at the inquiry. In the end, Parks said, no special care was provided. He said he and his fellow emergency room doctors agreed afterwards that they would never let anyone jump a queue for care. “We couldn’t take part in any .... requests for preferential access. We had to just see the next sickest patient in the queue,” he said. “It needs to be that we see patients based on their need, their medical need and the next queue would be the time that they came to see us.” The inquiry, called by Premier Alison Redford to look into allegations of queue-jumping in the health system, began hearing from witnesses on Monday. Executives have talked about preferential treatment being an accepted practice under the old regional health boards, but no one has been able to cite any examples.
Photo by RANDY FIEDLER/Advocate staff
Marika Noordhoek readies her son Samuel, six months, to play the baby Jesus before the start of the Bethlehem Walk in Three Hills. Please see related story on page B1.
Please see INQUIRY on Page A2
Huron Carole fighting hunger one song at a time BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF You could say The Huron Carole is back by popular demand. While that’s glad tidings for anyone who enjoys hearing the charitable multi-performer Christmas concert, the fact is the Carole was reprised to help food banks meet a growing need — so it’s also sobering news. Singer Tom Jackson had taken a seven-year break from performing the concert that first started raising money for food banks two decades ago. He shelved The Huron Carole Tom Jackson in 2004 and instead brought Singing For Supper around to smaller communities, finding the more intimate show could sometimes fund rural food banks for an entire year. But in the intervening period, the scale of Canada’s national hunger problem had swelled to the point that 900,000 people are now using food banks every month — nearly half of them children. Discovering that statistic “was like cold water thrown in my face,” recalled Jackson. Red Deer’s food bank was among those that saw
PLEASE RECYCLE
BY BRENDA KOSSOWAN ADVOCATE STAFF
demand rise by more than 100 per cent since the 2009 recession, said deputy director Alice Kolisnyk. While client numbers recently dropped by an encouraging 10 per cent, the local charity still fed 2,100 adults and kids in the month of November. Jackson decided to relaunch The Huron Carole, which advocates an end to hunger. The concert named for Canada’s oldest Christmas hymn, written in the native Huron language by Jesuit missionary Father Jean de Brebeuf in 1643, is being performed this month in large and medium-sized cities from New Brunswick to Alberta. There’s a Monday, Dec. 17, performance at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre. Jackson will be accompanied by fellow musicians Sarah Slean, Matt Dusk and Susan Aglukark — artists who share his desire to help defeat hunger, while feeding the soul of listeners with music and stories that embrace the Christmas message of peace and harmony. The singers “are very socially conscious and they want to use their instruments for the better, to make a difference,” Jackson added. “With the strength of each artist’s voice on stage, this year’s Huron Carole will expand our ability to raise funds, awareness and hope, creating change one song at a time.” Three-time Juno Award winner Aglukark is best known for her massive hit O Siem, as well as being a motivational role model for aboriginal youths.
Talia Meguinis made a pact with her sisters and her female cousins as their babies started to grow. Disconnected from each other as children, the Meguinis girls vowed as young mothers that they would grow old together and watch their children become parents and raise babies of their own. That promise has weighed heavily on Deidra Meguinis’s heart since the day, late in February, when Red Deer City RCMP released the name of a Calgary woman whose body had been found in a recycling bin in Red Deer on Feb. 22. Talia Meguinis, 27, left three sons and a tight network of family and friends, for whom the hurt is as bad now as it was on the day they learned of her fate, said Deidra, who considers Talia her sister because their mothers were sisters. Deidra said she had felt something was wrong when she learned that a body had been found in Red Deer. Her fears were confirmed later that week, when police confirmed that Talia was the victim. “When she took her last breath, we all took that last breath with her. When her heart stopped, our hearts stopped,” Deidra said outside a Red Deer courtroom on Wednesday, where a Red Deer man is facing criminal charges in connection with Talia’s death. “We cry every night and every day for her. It still really hurts. This pain will never end.”
Please see CAROLE on Page A2
Please see MEGUINIS on Page A2
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Increasing cloudiness. High -11.
Four sections Alberta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A4 Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3,C4 Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5 Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D1-D4 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C6 Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C5 Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B6-B8
FORECAST ON A2
Pain will ‘never end’ for Meguinis family
CANADA
WORLD
NEAR-BRAWL ERUPTS AMONG MPS
HUNDREDS KILLED IN PHILIPPINES TYPHOON
A verbal dust-up in the House of Commons almost wound up in a bench-clearing brawl. A6
The death toll from the southern Philippines’ powerful typhoon climbed to about 350 people Thursday with nearly 400 missing. A7