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THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 2012
EAST EDITION
SCARBOROUGH’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SINCE 1962
Arts program aims to inspire Scarborough youngsters with Shakespeare 3 Scarborough Rotary Ribfest slated for this weekend at Thomson Park 10
Refugee cuts take toll on local hospitals: doctor MIKE ADLER madler@insidetoronto.com A prominent family physician in Scarborough says he is both ashamed of how Canada’s government has cut healthcare coverage for refugees and concerned local authorities don’t know how much hardship and added cost those cuts will bring. Dr. Paul Caulford saw early results of the new federal rules last week at the volunteer clinic for medically uninsured immigrants and refugees he runs on Lawrence Avenue in Scarborough. Refugee claimants whose coverage had been suddenly cancelled flooded the waiting room last Wednesday, including a pregnant woman, age 24, who Caulford said “arrived crying with severe abdominal pain.” After Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act,
became law on Canada Day the woman’s coverage under the Interim Federal Health Program for refugees disappeared. She was told her obstetrician would charge her $130 per visit, which she was unable to pay. “And then there was the delivery and hospital costs,” Caulford wrote later. He also described meeting a 61-year-old man, staying in a Scarborough shelter for refugees, whose heart medications had run out. The patient had heart failure and arterial fibrillation, an irregular heart beat, Caulford said. “He spoke no English and arrived alone, by public transit. He was sweating, afraid.” In interviews, Caulford said the Conservative government is acting like a bully when it tells such people, effectively, to fend for themselves. Ontario’s hospitals won’t turn people away in an emergency, allowing uninsured refugees, for example, >>>NEW, page 5
The Mirror a member of Pan Am Games media sponsorship group The Scarborough Mirror , as a member of the Metroland Media Group, is now the official print and online media sponsor of the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games. “The 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games will be a wonderful opportunity to showcase our wonderful city – so it’s
only natural the media who cover the neighbourhoods of Toronto be involved,” said Mirror Publisher Ian Proudfoot, Metroland Central’s regional vice-president. Metroland Media Group joins the Star Media Group (which includes the Toronto Star and Metro English >>>MIRROR, page 6
The Scarborough Mirror - A Metroland Community Newspaper
Staff photo/NICK PERRY
Loreen Narcis puts decorations on a costume Tuesday evening at Fantazia Mas Camp’s headquarters in Scarborough in preparation for the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival.
Local revellers ready for carnival MIKE ADLER madler@insidetoronto.com People can call it the Toronto Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival if they wish, but the best and biggest parts of it come from Scarborough. This year, 11 of the 15 official carnival bands and all of the top eight - the best-judged masquerade crews, the ones sending all eight oversized costumes to the competitions and hundreds or thousands of revellers to the streets - were built in Scarborough warehouses and loading docks. Band leaders say most of volunteers who spend countless hours
cutting and gluing costumes are from Scarborough too. Some come every afternoon, stay until midnight, go to their homes and regular jobs and then return the next afternoon, said Will Morton, band leader of Fantazia International, who has had more than 100 helpers since May 15. “For the time they’ve spent on what they do, you can’t really pay them for their time,” said Morton, a welder by trade whose band will be in festival parade’s eighth spot Saturday. “We go through boxes and boxes of glue.” Near the front of an industrial unit off Brimley Road on Tuesday, Fantazia’s 300 masquerader cos-
@SCMirror
tumes in seven styles were in bags ready to be picked up. Around the back, the king – the last featured costume to compete tonight at Allan Lamport Stadium – was in sections, but ready. So was Ron DesVignes, the man who will maneuver it for the crowd and judges. He said he knew how to trap the wind in the stadium and not blow over, and that at 65, he might be the oldest of the evening’s competitors. Most of all, you have to be fit to maneuver the giant costumes, said DesVignes, who prepares with a lot of squats and a lot of cycling. “Of course, your core has to be right,” >>>SCARBOROUGH, page 14
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