TUESDAY MAY 7, 2013
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BCYCNA
GOLD 2012 General Excellence
MAKING HER PRO DEBUT
VALDY RETURNS TO ERRINGTON HALL
A32
B2
Ballenas Secondary grad begins her pro golf tour journey
He has sold almost 500,000 albums and he is in our region on Saturday night
LOCAL ELECTION ISSUES
Hospital promises
All-candidates meeting happens without Liberal JOHN HARDING editor@pqbnews.com
Weeks away from the opening of the $17 million Oceanside Health Centre, provincial election candidates are talking about a hospital for the Parksville Qualicum constituency. A member of the audience at an all-candidates forum Sunday asked for direct answers from Barry Avis (NDP) and David Coupland (Conservatives) regarding improved health services for the region. The candidates were asked to answer if they will, or will not, fight for a hospital in their first year of office if elected. Both Avis and Coupland said “I will,” but both put caveats on their MAY 14 answers when interviewed by The NEWS after the meeting. “Not a hospital,” said Avis. “The plan from (a 2004 report) was not a large hospital, a small hospital, 30-beds. And not in the first year. I’ve talked with (NDP Leader) Adrian (Dix) and I’ve talked with (NDP health critic) Mike Farnworth and they say they are willing to support me on having that facility (the OHC) get to the point where the local residents are happy with the service they are getting and I think of that as a small hospital.” Coupland also clarified his response after the meeting. “What I meant was emergency care facility — transitioning to a hospital.”
BRITISH COLUMBIA VOTES
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See STILWELL’S ABSENCE, page A7
NEIL HORNER PHOTO
TRADITIONAL TOT: Royal Canadian Legion member Al McRae distributes traditional navy tots of rum at Sunday’s Battle of the Atlantic service in Qualicum Beach. See more on page A5.
RESCUE ON THE ROCK
Key people coming to Qualicum NEIL HORNER
news@pqbnews.com
When you’re engaged in a life-or-death search situation, you want to know the people you’re working with have the chops to do what needs to be done — quickly and efficiently. That’s one of the key reasons search and rescue technicians from the length of Vancouver Island will be converging on the Qualicum Beach area early next month for the third bi-annual Rescue on the Rock. The event, said Arrowsmith Search and Rescue spokesperson Ken Neden said the exercise will involve as many as 50 out-of-town searchers taking part in joint rescue drills on Sunday, June 2. “We do this every couple of years,” Neden said. “It’s
mainly to practice skills and work with other teams with mutual aid. We have fun, too. We get to know more people from different groups, working together. We do mutual aid calls fairly regularly on the Island and you’re more likely to call on someone if you know what they can do.” The event, he added, will be held mainly in the area of Little Qualicum Falls and will involve a combination of rope and river rescue. “We’ll pick a spot and have someone in distress in or by the river and the scenario will see us have to lower rescue teams to them and bring them up a cliff,” Neden said. “For the ground searchers the exercise will test for probability of detection, where we will hide objects in an area and see how many of them they can find.”
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