WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 17 2016
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BRIGHT LIGHTS 12
VIMFF launch
Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival kicks off new season TASTE 29
Sushi Bella
Guest columnist Grade-fiver Nodin C. Ravensbergen SPORTS 32
Women’s rugby
Premier team make a push for new members NORTHSHORENEWS
LOCAL NEWS . LOCAL MATTERS . SINCE 1969
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Senior struggles in North Van shelter
Convalescing cancer survivor’s plight highlights growing crisis for housing supports BRENT RICHTER brichter@nsnews.com
An 82-year-old North Vancouver woman trying to recover from cancer surgery has been sent to a homeless shelter while her apartment undergoes repairs.
The decision came after an in-camera session with North Vancouver Museum and Archives capital campaign organizers who were unable to meet a Dec. 31, 2015 deadline to raise $5 million. At the time, Clark made a motion to defer a museum decision until after campaign fundraisers could make a public presentation to council. “Far too much has gone on in the back room there and it needs to come out in the public,” said Clark. His motion was defeated, with Bookham and Bell
Fran Flann was still working part time at a drycleaners in Kitsilano to supplement her pension up until she collapsed from pneumonia on Jan. 1. In the course of her chest X-rays, doctors found she had breast cancer, requiring a mastectomy. A week after the operation she was discharged only to find her apartment was inaccessible as the property managers were treating it for bedbugs. A Vancouver Coastal Health social worker arranged for her to stay at the Grouse Inn in Lower Capilano but funding for that lasted only a week. “Our government has 60 – and I’m sympathetic to their situation – Syrian refugees at the Sandman Inn downtown. They’re in a hotel and they’re eating and you cannot help this lady who is recovering from major surgery to stay and rest? You want to send her to a shelter, predominantly for men, addicts, people with mental illness? You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Robyn Brown, a longtime friend of Flann’s who has
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Fran Flann, 82, sits in the common room of North Vancouver’s homeless shelter. The senior has been out of her rental apartment since undergoing cancer surgery in January and is facing another week or more at the shelter while her suite is treated for bedbugs. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD
City votes against rehashing museum decision JUSTIN BEDDALL jbeddall@nsnews.com
A consultant’s financial feasibility report that effectively sunk the proposed museum at The Shipyards will not be reviewed at a public council meeting.
City of North Vancouver Coun. Don Bell’s motion for a meeting to allow a thorough public review of the BDO report on the proposed business plan for the waterfront museum was defeated 4-3 Monday. Bell’s motion noted the BDO report and museum’s
response to the report were discussed in camera (behind closed doors) and never fully articulated in open council and should be discussed publicly “in the interests of transparency of the process.” Bell, along with Couns. Pam Bookham and Rod Clark voted in favour of the motion, while Mayor Darrell Mussatto, and Couns. Craig Keating, Linda Buchanan and Holly Back voted against it. “I just think the public and those that supported it deserve the benefit of that discussion,” Bell said. On Jan. 25 council voted down plans for a new museum inside the Pipe Shop.
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