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Volume 20 No. 84
Hells Angels enjoy an afternoon at the Cumberland Motorcycle Roundup in 2013. Photo by Drew A. Penner/Echo Staff
HELLS NO! Comox resident Joanne McEwan has enjoyed working at the Rocky Mountain Café, which she says is a safe environment that has allowed her to grow professionally and personally.
Community Living Month highlights hidden abilities By Drew A. Penner Echo Staff Jennifer Fleming moved to Courtenay from Charlottetown, PEI and has dreams of one day running her own veterinary clinic. Her developmental disability made gaining skills in a traditional post-secondary environment a challenge, but she’s recently found success after transitioning to the veterinarian medical office assistant program at Excel Career College. “When I was at North Island College my class was about eight people,” she said. “Here it’s oneon-one. So it makes a big difference. There’s just my teacher and I and that’s it.” The learning model, which focuses on job skills training through a combination of paperbased and computer activities, allows Fleming to spends anywhere from four hours to seven hours a day pursuing her studies. (Continued on page 2)
Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation Don McRae visited veterinarian office assistant student Jennifer Fleming as part of Community Living Month activities.
Cumberland Motorcycle Roundup tweaking rules to bar biker gangs from wearing colours at event By Drew A. Penner Echo Staff The Cumberland Motorcycle Roundup has seen considerable growth in recent years with 6,000 visitors turning up for the 2014 edition of the street festival. In order to make sure the event remains “incident free” in future, organizers are rejigging things, including removing some of the bike rodeo games and barring outlaw motorcycle groups like the Hells Angels from wearing their colours in downtown Cumberland during the event. Jean Cameron, chair of the Cumberland Motorcycle Roundup Association, announced a series of changes to the structure of the event during a presentation to the Village council Oct. 13. A central event registration booth that can collect official statistics on participants and visitors will be brought into force and will help maintain effective quality control on the event, Cameron said. In order to “maintain a certain amount of decorum” a new vendor application form will be implemented that will help organizers get a better idea of what products will be on display. Some of the bike rodeo games,
deemed unsafe, will be eliminated. Outlaw motorcycle gangs, such as the Hells Angels, which in the past have had multiple booths at the event, will no longer be allowed to take part in the motorcycle extravaganza held on Dunsmuir Avenue, at least officially. Cameron explained that her organization will have the authority to prevent biker gangs from turning up in uniform (“wearing their colours”) during the event, but noted that after the roundup is over freedom of expression laws would prevent officials from doing anything about it. “This is a free country right?” she said. “Because the main street is an actual event site we can ask them not to wear their particular colours.” The change in policy arose after meetings with the RCMP and liquor regulation authorities, both of which will play a key role in identifying the specific outlaw motorcycle gangs that need to be barred from the street festival. “Our change of policy will include the committee not accepting registrations from these particular outlaw motorcycle gangs as vendors,” she said. “Once the barricades come down at 5 o’clock...what can we do?” (Continued on page 2)
St. Joseph’s prepares for risk of Ebola outbreak Hospital nurses say they’ve received little information By Drew A. Penner Echo Staff The miracles of modern technology and transportation have opened up unimaginable horizons, but have also made the possibility of a global biological scourge arriving on our peaceful shores real. As the death of a patient with Ebola in Texas and the infection of the protected health care workers who tried to help him continues to raise concerns that
Canada has never experienced any cases of Ebola, but St. Joseph’s General Hospital is preparing for an outbreak just in case. (Image courtesy of the BC Centre for Disease Control) Vancouver Island residents could be at risk if someone with the virus turned up here, local health officials
have been developing a defence strategy. “We started approximately a month ago with preparations,” said Bonnie Duncan, an infection prevention control specialist at St. Joseph’s General Hospital. “The first thing we looked at was recognizing the case when it comes in the door at triage.” The World Health Organization has admitted to mishandling the initial stages of the West African Ebola response and the Texas hospital has apologized to the family of the Liberian man who died in their care Oct. 8. In September officials at St. Joseph’s in Comox began following the lead of the Vancouver Island Health Authority (Island Health), to
make sure they would be ready for even a worst-case scenario. Right away St. Joseph’s put in place a process that ensured they were properly screening for Ebola and verified their isolation room would meet public health requirements. This designated area can be accessed from outside so any infected patient wouldn’t have to be transported through uncontaminated sections of the hospital. Officials also made sure they have appropriate gear available should somebody walk through the door with the virus. “We have equipment on site that we’ll be using until what Vancouver Island Health Authority (Island
Health) recommends is available, Duncan said. “It shouldn’t be too long until it’s here.” They already have personal protective gear that can guard against Ebola, but the current equipment is more bulky that the brand new tools Island Health is sending to hospitals on Vancouver Island. The health authority has stocked up on 700 new kits, which it sent out to hospitals last week. Island Health began developing an anti-Ebola strategy in August. “We formed a cross-health authority working group to start preparing contingency plans,” said Island Health spokesperson Sarah Plank. (Continued on page 2)