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Friday, November 15 • 2013
{lōkəl}
Vol. 6 • Issue 40
Tap dancer represents Canada in Germany See Page 5
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Leafs looking to bounce back See Page 21
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Winterrs Hou
Christmas spirit comes to downtown core
Sam Van Schie photos
Willa and Harold Horsfall (left photo) were among the Festival of Lights volunteers helping decorate Baker Street on Wednesday morning. Nelson Fire Rescue began installing white LED lights (centre photo) along the skyline of Baker Street buildings on Tuesday. Coun. Bob Adams also volunteered his time to wrap garland around a downtown lamppost. All the lights will be switched on for the first time during Santa on Baker Street/Elf Walk on Friday, December 6 and will be illuminated nightly from dusk until midnight throughout the winter.
Interior Health confirms reduction to begin on January 6
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Kaslo ER hours officially cut KIRSTEN HILDEBRAND Nelson Star Reporter
Kaslo learned the date their emergency department hours will be reduced at Tuesday night’s village council meeting. Interior Health vice president for Community Integrated Health Services attended the meeting along side Dr. Jeremy Etherington, vice president of Medicine and Quality. Their message to council — hour reduction will begin January 6, 2014 with the ER at Victorian Community Health Centre open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “We firmly believe consistent, day-
time hours of service will help us resolve our ongoing physician recruitment challenges. Once we have a stable pool of physicians in place we can build the foundation for a strong robust primary care centre with ready access to physicians, diagnostic testing and public health nursing services,” said Neuner before council. This change addresses the uncertainty the community has been facing over the past year in terms of frequent ER closures. It has been closed 38 times between January 1 and November 1, 2013. Of those times, 27 were due to the lack of physician coverage with closure periods varying from overnight to
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several days at a time. Maggie Winters is part of the Kaslo and Area Health Care Working Group and she attended Tuesday’s village council meeting while about 200 people from the community gathered outside for a candle light vigil acknowledging the loss of their ER services. Winters said few were surprised at the announcement made by IH. “We pretty much knew exactly what they were coming here to say,” she said. “We’ve known it was coming. We’ve been trying to stave it off but to no avail. Now, I think we just need to regroup, figure out how to move forward and how we work with them to ensure the
safety of our residents.” They plan on holding IH “to task” on this considering the gaps created by a 76 per cent reduction of hours, said Winters. “Our job is to make sure those gaps are filled adequately and to fight for that.” Interior Health told Kaslo they understand this change in service means transportation to neighbouring sites is critical in emergency situations minimizing time to high-level care. They said they’re working in partnership with the BC Ambulance Ser-
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