Air Ambulance Wouldn't Have Saved Natasha Richardson

There's been a great deal of press concerning the death of Natasha Richardson and the fact that there was no air ambulance available to transport her to Montreal. The discussion has been ignited by the embarrassing sniping by American news media at our medical system.

The simple truth is that an air ambulance wouldn't have made a whit of difference and anyone who can do sums should know that.

If Quebec had a helicopter service, the closest available would likely be in Montreal. The air ambulance would have had to fly 100 kilometers to the Ste Agathe hospital and then make the return trip to Montreal. Typically, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes from the time of the call to get airborne and with an average cruising speed of 150 miles per hour, the complete trip would have taken about an hour and a half.
An ambulance, dispatched immediately, with siren and red lights ablaze, would make the trip in about the same time, probably faster.

The real question that should be asked, is why couldn't the St. Agathe hospital treat her?

The head injury suffered by Ms Richardson needed to be treated immediately and any delay, including an hour and a half helicopter trip was clearly too long.

The Centre Hospitaler Laurentien in Ste-Agathe des Monts is not big, but it is well equipped.

It serves a large area, centered about a hundred kilometers north of Montreal, smack dab in the middle of the picturesque Laurentian mountains, an area that serves as a year-round playground for skiers, boaters, hikers, cyclers, cottagers and tourists, as well as the massive Mont Tremblant resort.

The small local population it serves is boosted on weekends, summer vacation and holidays, with tourists, cottagers and day trippers from Montreal. Because of the influx, the hospital, aside from treating the local community, sees a lot of recreation type injuries.

I've been to the emergency room only once, a couple of years ago, when my mother had a bad reaction to multiple bee stings, while berry picking. She was treated within minutes by a competent doctor who quickly prescribed some helpful antihistamines. The service was first class and professional.

It would seem to me that upgrading the hospital, to include a first class ER, trauma and orthopaedic unit should be a priority. It makes more sense than sending for a helicopter ambulance from Montreal. The area has been a growing and the expansion of the Mont Tremblant resort requires a re-evaluation of the hospital's facilities.

Canada has a rationed health care system with finite resources. When money is spent, bean counters always looks to maximize return. They analyze how to best to spend the available money in order to insure that the public gets the most bang for the buck.
If more lives can be saved by spending dollars on better emergency care, than by, say an emergency air ambulance service, then that's what the money is spent on. It's sounds cruel but it works on a large scale.

We have no apologies to make to those Americans, who tell us that their system is better because there is more first class and exotic treatments available. It is only available to those who can afford to pay.
The forty million Americans with no health insurance would dream of living the Canadian health care experience. Even people with health insurance are limited and denied life-saving treatment deemed too expensive by insurers looking to deny responsibility in pursuit of profit.

A trauma patient delivered to a hospital by an American air ambulance is still up 'up the river' if he has no money to pay.

Detractors of Medicare point to incidents like the death of Natasha Richardson as proof that our system is not as good as the US system. The real truth, is that our 'socialized' system keeps Canadians living longer and infinitely more healthy than America's private system and at sixty percent of the cost. It is designed to deliver the most service, to the most people. While it is true that exotic and expensive treatments are less available, on balance is it's a worthwhile trade off that statistics back up.
Before establishing an air ambulance, it would make a lot more sense to judge whether the money can be better spent else where.

But perhaps it's a question of controlling the cost. With a creative solution, it seems to me, that there is a way to establish an air ambulance service that makes financial sense and one that can be justified. Let me offer my humble proposition.

Just two teams, one based in Quebec city and the other Montreal would serve three-quarters of the Quebec population (within 30 minutes).

It would make sense that these helicopters be operated by the Quebec and Montreal municipal police departments, which would be subsidised by the Quebec government. To limit costs and increase efficiency they could also be be used in other emergency and security operations. The police departments are well-positioned to integrate and operate these units, which should be staffed by competent advanced-care paramedics who could do more than just scoop up critically injured patients.
It would be a wonderful Canadian solution.

Michelle Obama is a Plain Jane

Let me start by saying that it should be of no consequence that Michelle Obama doesn't have Halle Berry's looks or Jackie Kennedy's charisma.

The only reason I comment on her looks and style, or lack thereof, is the incessant and annoying attempt by the American mainstream media to portray her as attractive, glamorous and fashionable.

In a desperate and sad attempt, the American networks and magazines are trying to portray her as something she clearly is not. I was sickened by CNN's Wolf Blitzer's drooling description of her and have lost all respect for him as a journalist.

Michelle Obama isn't attractive and glamorous, anyone who has eyes, knows it.
Those who say different are lying and they know it.

Shame on Wolf and all those other so-called journalist who pretend that she is what she is not. It's time, as the old fable goes, to admit that this empress has no clothes.

To be cruelly frank, she isn't the least bit attractive and her gawky frame and hulking demeanour makes the dreadful clothes that she wears look even worse.

While the media fawns, the deadly silence from the real mavens in the fashion world is most telling. You know the old saying- If you can't say anything nice.....

Notwithstanding, some can't keep quiet. NPR and Fox contributor Juan Williams is one of the few to express what so many feel.
Michelle Obama, according to him, "...has this Stokely-Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going"
Oscar de la Renta told Women's Wear Daily, "You don't...go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater."

But enough already! All of this shouldn't matter a whit.

Her intelligence (which she certainly has an abundance of) and the good she puts it to, should be the sole barometer of her success as Queen of America.

Queen of America?

Of course. That's what you can rightly call an unelected person who becomes the 'First Lady' of a nation.
The Commonwealth gets it's monarchs through inheritance and America gets it's sovereign queen by default.
The only difference between the Queen of England and the Queen of America is that the former gets her job for life, but without any power at all, while the latter rules for no more than eight years, but exercises enormous influence.

Both enjoy the largess of a fawning, supportive and subservient press. The queen is loved because she is the Queen and Mrs Obama is loved because she is the First Lady, period.

It's in this context that we can understand why the American media want her to be beautiful, graceful and glamorous too, it makes for great reporting.

I'm often asked by Americans (rather disparagingly), why we continue to tolerate a monarch.
I never flinch. I always tell them that America would be better off with a monarch so that they wouldn't elevate their elected president to superstar status.
Here in Canada and in the Commonwealth, we offer our Queen our unquestioned admiration, but judge our politicians by their deeds and not their position.

I take great pride in the fact that most Canadians cannot offer up the name our Prime Minister's wife or those of his children. They are largely irrelevant us. It's Stephen Harper who we elected, not his family.

It's true that when it comes to looks, fashion and glamour, Michelle Obama is no Jackie Kennedy.

But Jackie Kennedy was by all accounts, no rocket scientist and tolerated a philandering husband in silence to preserve her position. Is that a role model?

Looking at Michelle Obama last week, alongside Carla Bruni, the French President's wife, was a painful reminder of what the First Lady is not- pretty, fashionable and glamorous.

But Carla Bruni is an ex-actress and ex-songstress and not much of each. She is most famous for her nude photos. Is that a role model?

Perhaps Michelle Obama isn't all that pretty, nor that glamorous. Maybe she doesn't look like Claudia Schiffer in clothes, but perhaps, just perhaps, she is eminently qualified for her job.

She's smart, dignified and well educated. The media should stop pretending and start promoting her for all the good things that she is.


See :
 Michelle Obama - This Empress Has no Clothes!

Michelle Obama Needs First Lady Lessons

Montreal Gazette Misses the Real Story -Again

Friday's Gazette had a front page story by Charlie Fidelman entitled "MD pact a one-way brain drain, top doc warns."
The story details an agreement whereby Quebec and Ontario doctors will move easily between the two jurisdictions without a lot of red tape.

"The accord will allow doctors who hold full practice permits to obtain equivalent work permits for the neighbouring province rapidly – within 24 to 48 hours." -Gazette

The gist of the article is that it will lead many doctors to leave Quebec due to inferior working conditions and salary.

What is absolutely incredible, is the fact that the writer fails to mention that the Quebec government has already let health agencies know that it has frozen new positions for specialists until the end of next year.

I can't for the life of me understand how this fact remains unmentioned anywhere in the mainstream press.

I wrote a piece about last Sunday. Link

Here is the article on the FRMQ website. (Quebec Medical Residents Federation)

Wednesday 11 March 2009
Moratorium on PREMS in Specialties

"On February 2, 2009, Quebec's Deputy Minister of Health and Social Services sent a directive to Quebec health and social services agencies, confirming the implementation of a moratorium on regional physician resource plans (PREMs) in specialties until November 30, 2010. Thus, terminating medical residents will have to choose a position among those not filled last year.

Only two exceptions are noted: radiation oncology and haemato-oncology, which will benefit from a degree of flexibility.

The government points to the changes made over the past few years in the organization of care within the system, the establishment and consolidation of service corridors and the opening of new settings to justify the position freeze. It submits that, as a result of these changes, the government has to take time out to re-evaluate needs. The Federation reacted strongly to this piece of news and a letter stating our position was sent to the deputy minister.

The president of the FMRQ also wrote an editorial on the issue, which you can read in the March 25, 2009 issue of Actualité médicale and on the Federation's Web site."

Here is a letter written by Martin Bernier, M.D. president of FRMQ to M. Jacques Cotton (Deputy Minister- Health and Social Services) complaining about the moratorium decree.


So I'll ask again. Which is a bigger factor in Quebec losing doctors?;

1. The fact that it's now easier for doctors to move to Ontario, or

2. THE FACT THAT QUEBEC IS NOT HIRING ANY NEW SPECIALISTS.

WHY! WHY! WHY!
Why does the Gazette Health editor fail to mention this hiring freeze?
Does he not think that that a moratorium on hiring specialists is pertinent to an article he pens discussing a potential doctor exodus????

John and Yoko's Montreal's Peace Experience

Until June 21, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is featuring 'The Peace Ballad of John and Yoko', a 40th anniversary tribute to Beatle John Lennon and his artist-wife Yoko Ono's bed-in for peace at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969. Link

For those of you too young too remember, it was a heady time in Montreal, back in 1969, when John Lennon and his new wife Yoko Ono held a 'bed-in' (their version of a sit-in) for peace in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal.
Montreal was still a bit of a backwater back then, but luckily, when the peace couple was refused entry into the United States, they made their way up to our fair city to make their point.

'Eventually, they flew to Montreal on May 26 where they stayed in Room 1738 and 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. During their seven day stay, they invited Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, Dick Gregory, and Al Capp and all but Capp sang on the peace anthem Give Peace a Chance, recorded in the hotel room on June 1."

-Wikipedia

Reading the National Post article brought back some fond memories of that event, to which I had a very tiny personal connection to.

I was but a junior high school student at the time, attending Montreal's most diverse and interesting high school, Northmount High, along with Tommy Schnurmacher, who today, is a successful and popular radio morning personality on CJAD.

Back then, in 1969, Tommy was an artsy high school senior with a decidedly offbeat view of the world. He was friends with my older cousin who lived upstairs from my family, in our shared duplex, in the Snowdon district of Montreal.

Tommy showed up one afternoon, in his familiar black beatnik regalia, complete with his signature 'Che Guevara' beret, looking for some babysitting help from my cousin. I intercepted him in the hallway and asked him who the little oriental girl was, the one holding onto his hand, ever so tightly.

I've reconstructed the hallway conversation between Tommy and I as best as I can, considering that it's been 40 years.

"Who's the kid? I asked.

"Don't tell anyone, but it's Yoko Ono's daughter, Kyoko. I'm babysitting" announced Tommy.

"Ah, bullshit..."

"Suit yourself"

"Whoooaaaa!.... Is it true, how'd you pull that off?"

"I've been spending time with John and Yoko at the Queen E and after a couple of days, they consigned their daughter to me, to take out to the park. Apparently I'm very trustworthy."

"What are you going to do with her?"

"Going to the park"

"Tommy, I got a 8mm camera. Can I take some movies."

"No"

"C'mon"

"Nope'

"C'mon, it'll be proof when nobody believes you."

"hmmm.....Okay"

So off we went to the McKenzie King park, where young Kyoko and the uncomfortable Tommy spent an hour riding the swings, balancing on the teeter-totter and generally doing what five year-olds like to do.
I shot my film and went home. Two weeks later I got the film returned in the mail, (you had to send it out to get it developed in those days) screened it once and forgot about it for forty years. I imagine the film still exists somewhere in a box, in my mother's apartment.

I hadn't thought about it until last year when I heard Tommy on the radio, retelling the story of his John and Yoko experience, and of his subsequent bad luck.
It seems that while Tommy was babysitting, Lennon was composing his famous song "Give Peace a Chance."
He wrote the lyrics on a cardboard and gave it to another Northmount room-crasher, who had come along with Tommy to the hotel.

Years later, she auctioned off the document for $800,000! Link

Boy, Tommy sounded pissed about that, when recounting the story on the radio.

Hearing the story again got me thinking.

I never heard of Kyoko Ono again. Not once over the years. Nothing in the papers, no mention of her anywhere. I never saw her with Yoko. In fact it's like she never existed.

Curious, I Googled her name, to see if she was real, or if Tommy had been bullshitting me about her being Yoko's daughter.

Believe it or not, young Kyoko, two or three years after our babysitting experience, was abducted by her natural father, eccentric American film-maker Tony Cox, Ono's second husband. Kyoko was initiated into bizarre Doomsday cult called the 'The Walk' and was hidden from Yoko for over thirty years!

Mother and daughter finally reconciled after Kyoko bore a child, Yoko's granddaughter.

Read the story, it's quite amazing. LINK

Quebec News of the Weird- Volume 01

Strip Club Chastised For Telling the Truth

In an effort to boost business, a Pierrefonds (a Montreal suburban town) strip club, tried a rare dose of truth to entice patrons.
Unfortunately, the club was asked to change it's advertising billboard, (facing Gouin Blvd.), after someone complained.
I guess truth in advertising can only go so far.
The sign originally read;

12 danseuses, (12 dancers)
10 belles, (10 pretty)
1 grosse (1 fat)
1 laide (1 ugly)

The manager reluctantly acquiesced to change the offensive message.
Here's the new version;

12 danseuses, (12 dancers)
10 belles, (10 pretty)
1 equeurante (1 stunning)
1 tres pesante (1 very fat)

I guess it not that hard to figure out who it was who complained...

Mini-Putt is Newest Quebec 'Sport'

A Laval entrepreneur who claims that mini-putt is actually a sport, took his case to an administrative tribunal and won. The reason he appealed the first ruling, (that mini-putt isn't a sport) had to do with obtaining a liquor license in his recreation centre.
The case took over a year and half to be adjudicated, but it was finally determined that mini-putt was a game of skill that required training to improve, qualifying it as a sport.
London 2012? Link


Quebec Prisoners Big on Viagra

I didn't know that prisoners in federal detention had access to VIAGRA, but I guess it makes some sort of perverse sense, given our country club prison system.
It seems that Quebec prisoners are prescribed Viagra and Cialis five times more often than prisoners in other provinces and that the prison in Donnacona is the hotbed of related sexual activities with the most prescriptions of any prison in Canada. Spokesman for the prison system declared that most prescriptions are made ...ahem.. in anticipation of conjugal visits.
Vive la difference! Link

In a unrelated story, the recently imposed tobacco ban, the one that makes our prisons smoke free, has resulted in a lucrative black market. It is reported in that same prison, Donnacona (must be a busy place!), the price of 50 grams of contraband tobacco is up to $700. Ouch! Link

Mental Patients Stuck in Limbo

It seems that the Jean Talon Hospital (in Montreal) has nowhere to transfer it's long term mental patients, so they're just keeping them permanently.

Two mental patients have been living in the hospital's short term psychiatric ward for over four years, because no place can be found to take care of them permanently.
It's reminiscent of the guy who lived in the Paris airport terminal for years, because no country would take him. Link


Molson-Coors Prez never heard of the Canadiens

Molson-Coors owns almost 20% of the Montreal Canadiens. When contacted by local media to inquire if the company was interested in acquiring George Gillett's share of the team, the president, Scotsman Peter Swinburn shocked the reporter by stating that he never heard of the Canadiens. President since last July, he also admitted that he never attended a hockey game and couldn't identify one player on the team. He is quoted as saying that soccer and rugby are his favorite games.
It's safe to say that the Canadiens are not high on his agenda.