Up front: Newman walking the long road to recovery Community: Pennies for Presents now Coins for Kids
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Friday, December 13, 2013
Health brass wants new hospital site identified, bought and paid for ASAP Wishlist set: Large acreage outside area flood zone needed
questionable seismic safety, asbestos throughout, crowded parking lots, several patients per room (allowing germ transmission), leaking pipes, an aging elevator, crumbling Peter W. Rusland infrastructure, and poor elderNews Leader Pictorial access for a growing population now at 82,000. o you know Chronic bed shortages worwhere our new ried CDH X-ray technician Cowichan Erin Whiteford. District Hospital “Every day we’re over capaccould be built? ity,” she explained of CDH’s If so, regional hospital95-or so staffed beds. district board members, and Site manager Island Health brass Peter Fahey told want to hear from how staff uses you. every square inch of The candidate 12available bed space, to 20-acre property pushing numbers to must be outside the around 140 at times. 500-year flood zone. It A suggestion that also needs good landrecovering patients ing and lift-off access Rob Hutchins: might be helped in for medivac helicopsearching for site unused space in the ters serving patients in former Cowichan the new $300 millionLodge — while a plus hospital. new CDH is built — was basiSitting in central Cowichan cally nixed as impractical by — away from neighbouring Fahey and Sullivan, who cited homes and businesses — medical standards. while boasting growth room, Whiteford warned the new hook-up capacity to water and hospital must have enough beds sewer lines, plus good highway to allow population growth. “If access, would be pluses. not, we’ll be building another The wish list, and processes new hospital in 40 years.” for finding, buying, building Still, Sullivan explained adand financing CDH’s new ditions could be made to the 26,000-square-metre hospital current CDH’s sloped site — were explained and discussed such as erecting a nine-story during Saturday’s public seshospital to reach the needed sion at VIU Cowichan. 26,000-square metres. The hosts were Cowichan Or a new CDH could be Valley Regional District built next door, and the old Chairman Rob Hutchins, and hospital could be demolished Island Health’s capital-planwith lots of noise and dust. ning director Chris Sullivan. It was hazy how much a new Their pitch informed folks CDH could cost. CDH’s current Gibbins Road Hutchins explained the price site, and 1967 hospital, are will see a 40-60% split between basically obsolete, according Cowichan taxpayers, and to a recent master-site plan. Victoria. Those optics showed an old more on page 6 CDH with cramped storage,
D For Stacy Middlemiss, Caring with Cookies has become a holiday tradition for herself and her team of volunteers.
No crumbling these cookies Christmas mission: Meet a Duncan woman who bakes hundreds of cookies for the less-fortunate
Ashley Degraaf
News Leader Pictorial
F
or Stacy Middlemiss, one bite into a home-made Christmas cookie brings back a thousand memories. And that’s partly why the Duncan resident created a Christmas cookie donation drive she calls Caring with Cookies in 2008. For Middlemiss, it’s become a holiday tradition for her and volunteer helpers, stemming from old family traditions. “I’ve always had the urge to help those
less fortunate and felt like Christmas had become such a chore,” Middlemiss explained. “I felt like I needed to do something to help me get back to the meaning of Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I know that my cookies aren’t going to change anyone’s life. I guess I just wanted the people who receive these cookies to know even though they’re struggling in life, someone is thinking about them.” Middlemiss was living in Victoria when she started Caring with Cookies with the help from her friends and family. “Those first years I packaged all of the cookies on my own, tying each bag closed with a nice piece of curled ribbon. It was quite a feat for me,” she said. “Now, it would probably take me a week to do it alone. My husband Jeff and eight-year-old step-daughter Dailynn as well as my in-laws Kevin and Susan, sister-in-law Kelly and her daughter
courtesy Stacy Middlemiss
Annika, have been huge helpers the past three years and it has become a tradition for us.” This is Middlemiss’ third-year running the campaign. It is centred now in Duncan, but helps the less fortunate in Victoria as well. Cookies are donated to Duncan’s Warmland House as well as Cool Aid Society shelters and Our Place in Victoria. Last year, 80 packages of 480 scrumptious cookies went to Cowichan’s shelter. “This year I’m hoping the same 80 will go to the people that have Christmas dinner there, as well as an additional 45 for the people actually living there,” Middlemiss explained. “Every year I drop the cookies off at each location and am welcomed with big smiles but I leave the cookie delivering to the discretion of the individual shelters.” This year, Middlemiss and her husband will also be delivering cookies on the streets at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve along side Victoria’s Rev. Al Tysick of the Dandelion Society. more on page 12
Visit DQCakes.com to place your order!
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