WEDNESDAY JULY 27 2022
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Harmony Arts
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West Van’s 10-day festival of arts and culture launches Friday.
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Realtor discipline
Real estate agent loses his appeal to overturn misconduct penalties.
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Grand Boulevard
Butterflyway Project buds new pollinator garden.
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JOB ACTION
West Van Blue Bus service down 12% on first Monday of labour dispute BRENT RICHTER
brichter@nsnews.com
A labour dispute between the District of West Vancouver and its Blue Bus drivers and mechanics is starting to impact service levels for transit riders.
The Amalgamated Transit Union local 134’s 150 members began job action on Saturday, following at 99-per-cent strike vote earlier in the week. Currently, the union has banned its members from working overtime and drivers and mechanics now report to work wearing their union T-shirts, not their Blue Bus uniforms. According to the district, about 12 per cent of the scheduled service had to be cancelled Monday. Most of the service cuts were on the 255 Dundarave-Capilano University and 250A Horseshoe Bay-Downtown routes. When deciding which runs will be cancelled, dispatchers may choose to reduce Continued on page 10
SPECIAL GUEST Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks to kids at Parkgate Society Day Camp on Tuesday of last week. Trudeau dropped in at the child-care centre after his first-ever visit to Bowen Island, where he announced new investment in the Oceans Protection Plan, launched by the federal government in 2016. Read our story on page 14. NICK LABA / NSN
HEALTH-CARE CRISIS
‘Devastated’ nurses say staffing an issue in ER death
JANE SEYD
jseyd@nsnews.com
Nurses working at Lions Gate Hospital’s emergency department, where a woman recently died while waiting for a bed on a stretcher, have been left “absolutely devastated” and “traumatized” by the incident,
according to the BC Nurses Union.
Adriane Gear, vice-president of the nurses union, said she met with nurses who were working in the short-staffed ER when the death occurred. “From their perspective, this is one of those situations that could have been prevented,” said Gear. “The nurses believe
there’s a direct correlation between not having enough staff and not being able to adequately monitor this patient.” An internal review by Vancouver Coastal Health is now underway to determine exactly what happened in the case of an older woman who died after being treated for two days on a stretcher in the
emergency department’s waiting room, because no hospital beds were available. The Ministry of Health confirmed the woman was admitted to the ER on July 9 or July 10 but was kept on a stretcher in the waiting room because no beds were available, either in the ER or other hospital Continued on page 18
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