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DE K A M L O O P S
Something fishy at Dufferin — so these kids took action Page A5
TUESDAY
Tuesday, June 10, 2014 X Volume 27 No. 67
Kamloops, B.C., Canada X 30 cents at Newsstands
THIS WEEK
Tim Bozon talks life after 12-day coma Page A15
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School support staff reach tentative deal By Dale Bass
STAFF REPORTER
RIH ER only in Canada to offer OD kit
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
By Dale Bass
STAFF REPORTER
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
The emergency room at Royal Inland Hospital is unique in the country for a new and important reason. The Kamloops hospital is the only one in the country involved in a program to provide a take-home kit with the tools needed to help someone with a opiate overdose. The program is in effect elsewhere in communities, but Royal Inland’s ER is the lone one in Canada involved. It involves naloxone, a drug that can quickly reverse an overdose from drugs like codeine, morphine, heroin and other opiates. Dr. Trevor Corneil, a medical officer of health with the Interior Health Authority, said the program, run in partnership with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, involves some simple tools in a blue case about the size of an eyeglass case — needles, syringes and two vials of naloxone. X See RIH ER A10
For her 60th birthday, Kamloops Coun. Tina Lange set out to help raise money to buy a new leather couch for the Y Emergency Women’s Shelter. Lange’s birthday funds also helped purchased pyjamas and other needed items for the shelter. Dave Eagles/KTW
COUCH A REFUGE FOR THOSE IN NEED By Dale Bass
STAFF REPORTER
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
The day the couch was delivered, one of the women wasn’t feeling well. “She was sick and she planned on staying in all day,” Chantale Chow said. “So, we set her up on the new couch in the corner, with a blanket, and some of us sat with her and it seemed like just five minutes, but 20 minutes had gone by.” Such is the reaction something as simple as a sectional couch can make to the women who live in — and, like Chow, who work at — the Kamloops Y Women’s Emergency Shelter. The custom-created dark brown-leather sectional takes up
one whole wall and about half of another at the shelter, replacing an old, worn, donated cloth piece of furniture that had seen better days. The addition comes courtesy of an event that occurred on Jan. 9, 1954 — when Tina Lange was born. To celebrate her 60th birthday this year, the city councillor and former restaurant and hotel owner asked friends to donate money so she could buy the couch. KTW wrote of her request, people responded and, just weeks later, Lange had collected more than $5,000 — well more than the $2,500 price Sid Kandola of City Furniture gave her for what would have sold for more than $6,000. Lange gave another $1,000 to the Y’s Children Who Witness Abuse program and used the rest
to buy some of the other things on the shelter’s wish list — including a lot of pyjamas to be given to the women and children who seek shelter there every week. Many do. In the first three months of this year, the shelter was at full capacity more often than it was all of 2013. In 2012, 200 women and 100 children spent 5,823 nights there. It may not seem like much, but having new PJs to wear and having a clean, comfortable couch to curl up on can sometimes fulfil all needs at one moment. For Lange, seeing it in place and stretching out on it was satisfying. “Look at this thing,” she said. “I’m tall and I could stretch out three times on this, it’s so big. “It’s perfect.”
A tentative settlement with the unions representing school support and clerical staff happened quickly because “both sides came to the table and wanted to get the job done,” said Education Minister Peter Fassbender. He told KTW the talks, which began on Tuesday, June 3, and ended with a tentative agreement on Saturday, June 7, were the result of “hard bargaining on both sides. “Both parties stayed at the table,” Fassbender said. “They were prepared to negotiate. They bargained hard and both parties had to move.” He said part of the movement that led to the tentative agreement was allocating up to 20 per cent of the province’s Learning Improvement Fund — $75 million — that can be used to hire more education assistants. The five-year tentative agreement, rumoured to include a 5.5 per cent wage increase over the life of the term, includes standardized extended health-benefit plans and a commitment to a job-evaluation plan to
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IN THE EVENT OF A FULL STRIKE Here is what parents need to know: • Schools will be closed. • Parents with children who need supervision should make child-care arrangements. • Parents will receive final report cards. In some cases, the reports may be more abbreviated than normal. • There are 15 provincial exam courses scheduled between June 16 and June 26. For more information on strike implications and a full schedule, by date, of provincial exams, go online to kamloopsthisweek.com, click on the News tab and click on the story entitled “What parents need to know in the event of a full strike. deal with recruitment and retention issues. The tentative agreement includes adding more hours for those certified-educational assistants — formerly referred to as studentand school-support workers. Fassbender said details will be worked out at the local level based on the needs of each district. The agreement reached on the weekend deals with provincewide and monetary issues only; the unions involved will do district bargaining on local issues. X See UNION LOCALS A10