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A3
B1
KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK THURSDAY
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MARCH 26, 2015 | Volume 28 No. 37
DR. GUR SINGH • 1936-2015 DALE BASS
STAFF REPORTER
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
Last week, with his health failing, Dr. Gur Singh insisted on calling a meeting. He wanted to discuss planning for his annual golf tournament, which has raised more than $1 million since 2004 for the Kamloops Brain Injury Association (KBIA). No one was surprised — not his partners in the project, nor the KBIA that has benefitted from it for the past 11 years. “He made it abundantly clear to us, tough as it was, that we have to carry on,” said KBIA executive director Terry-Lynn Stone. They plan to do just that even as the organization, the medical community and the city itself mourns the death of Singh. Diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) last year, Singh died in Royal Inland Hospital on Tuesday, March 24. He was 78. Heidi Coleman, CEO of the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation, praised Singh for his
SD73 ordered to cut $1.6 million DALE BASS STAFF REPORTER dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
The death of Dr. Gur Singh this week has elicited an outpouring of memories of the man. Turn to page A2 and go online to kamloopsthisweek.com to read the thoughts of many who knew Singh.
vision for health care in the community. Singh was born in India on Sept. 25, 1936, and attended medical school there. He moved to North American in 1961, settling in Kamloops in 1967. At the time, he was the only neurosurgeon
in the community. “And he was on call every night,” Coleman said. “My God, what a trailblazer he was.” Coleman took the new head of surgery at the hospital, Dr. David Omahen, to meet with Singh recently. She said they spent
several hours talking about the time Singh tried to create a neurosciences centre in Kamloops, one of the few projects he took on that never came to fruition, and the value of the hospital to the city. CONTINUED ON A2
Kamloops-Thompson school district Supt. Karl deBruijn knows decisions being debated now will make people angry. Scenarios senior school-board administrators are analyzing include charging parents for students who ride the bus, adding pay parking at schools and, for four regional communities, shutting down their one-room schoolhouses. It’s all in an effort to meet a Ministry of Education-mandated reduction of $786,000 in the school-district budget. Add in another $814,000 that needs to be found due to enrolment realities and the school district is looking for $1.6 million to save. DeBruijn said the district has already cut its budget substantially through previous school closures, reconfigurations and other measures and is struggling to meet the government directive, “A lot of us aren’t sleeping at night,” he said. Complicating the matter is the fact enrolment figures for kindergarten classes this fall fell short of what was anticipated when the district held its registration days earlier this month. Demographical studies anticipated 1,040 students would be registered, but the final tally had 130 fewer. Because of the way school-board budgeting is done, however, submissions for funding have to be sent to the Ministry of Education before the board of education knows the final numbers. It is what has led to the need to make up some funding received that doesn’t reflect the enrolment realities. In total, it’s estimated school boards throughout the province have to find $35 million in enrolment-funding shortfalls, as well as another $29 million in administrative savings.
We lose “$500,000 to $700,000 a year running our buses. Maybe we have to charge for riding the buses.
”
— School District 73 Supt. Karl deBruijn
See EDUCATION MINISTER, A4
MARCH
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