British Columbia – Page 2

Seniors need more than 12 minutes of
physical activity each day

19. April 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: B.C. Seniors Advocate, British Columbia, Health effects of prolonged sitting, Island Health, physical therapy, residential care, seniors, seniors' health care, Sitting, Vancouver Island, Victoria, Victoria Times Colonist

Old Person's Home, Saatchi Gallery, London. Photo © Jim Limwood, Creative Commons via flickr

Old Person’s Home, an art exhibit at Saatchi Gallery, London. Photo © Jim Limwood, Creative Commons via flickr

Take 12 minutes.

Twelve minutes represent less than one per cent of a day.

If you work full-time, commute, ferry kids around, do chores, 12 minutes of free time allows you to catch your breath, prepare for the next crisis, or give your kids some undivided attention. Or 12 minutes means you’re late and you’ll be scrambling for the rest of the day.

If, however, your days lack the luxury of busy-ness—if, for example, you depend on others to help you dress, bathe, move about, arrange your social and recreational activities, and provide your meals—12 minutes may seem a mere eye blink in a day that stretches on and on like a geological epoch. Even if you subtract the eight hours of your day spent sleeping, the one hour spent bathing, dressing and personal care, three generous hours for eating and preparing to eat, you still face 12 hours of unalloted time. That’s 60 12-minute periods.

According to the Island Health spokesperson quoted in Katherine Dedyna’s April 9 article in this newspaper, 12 minutes is the minimum amount of physiotherapy or occupational therapy, nursing, or other “allied services” that each senior in residential care in the region receives each day from Island Health. Using $40 as an hourly average payment, Island Health funds 26 facilities almost $3,000 a year per resident, with services determined by the assessed needs of the individual residents. That means one facility may provide more hours of physiotherapy and another may arrange for more social-work hours per resident.

WIth the funds covering the spectrum of allied health services, most residents at most public long-term care facilities in the region receive much less than 12 minutes of physically active therapy daily, if any at all.

Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie highlights that lack in her report, Placement, Drugs and Therapy: We Can Do Better. She reveals that fewer than 12 per cent of B.C. seniors in public residential care homes receive weekly physiotherapy, and only 22 per cent receive recreational therapy such as chair exercises or bingo.

What she doesn’t detail is that, in some residential care facilities, if you need help to stand up, you likely spend your days sitting. Care home staff encourage you to use a wheelchair….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist.

Organic, by definition, includes contradictory meanings

Photo © Ray Frances Ong, via flickr and Creative Commons

I hope the organic food I purchase is “organic,” even though I KNOW all the food I eat is organic.

I realise that sounds confusing, but the word organic has many definitions.

The B.C. Government recently announced it would introduce regulations to govern the word’s use by food producers.

As we know, some farmers undergo extensive and expensive certification to demonstrate they’ve eliminated chemically made fertilizers, hormones and pesticides and genetically altered seed from their operations. Under B.C. and Canadian law, these producers may legally call their products “certified organic.”

Some other farmers eliminate the nasty stuff, but aren’t certified organic. These operations tend to be small and often lease farmland instead of owning it. Current regulations permit them to call their products organic, unsprayed, or pesticide free, provided they don’t market or sell their products outside B.C., or claim certification.

A third group of producers and sellers may exist who don’t use organic practices, but market their goods as such. The intended regulations mostly are meant to stifle these claims.

In these examples, we use Merriam-Webster’s definition of organic—“of, relating to, yielding, or involving the use of food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically made fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides.”

The dictionary’s other definitions of organic encompass broader meanings—for example, “of, relating to, or derived from living organisms” and “of, relating to, or containing carbon compounds.” These definitions turn the organic word-world into a muddy, microbe-infested swamp of connotation and implication….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Slip, slide and shimmy: Earthquakes on the West Coast

The year has begun amidst a series of earth-shaking events.

Three earthquakes were reported for the Vancouver Island region on January 2. The biggest, at magnitude 5.4, occurred 211 kilometres west of Port Hardy, while two smaller tremblers occurred west of Port Alberni. Five days later, a 4.8-magnitude quake west of Port Alice shook the coast.

They form part of a regional swarm of earthquakes that began late last year, as the tectonic plates beneath Vancouver Island released rock-bending pressure. To add perspective, about 4,000 earthquakes occur in B.C. every year. Of these, only a few—like the larger January quakes—are felt by people.

As solid as the ground beneath our feet seems, when the forces that shape the our planet’s surface start squeezing it, the granites, basalts and sedimentary rock on which our region’s municipalities are built take on the consistency and strength of something like fine, aged Cheddar….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Pipelines prompt protests; Costs will accrue

Spectacular Skeena River Valley. Photo © Sam Beebe, Ecotrust

Enbridge first proposed Kitimat as the West Coast terminus of its Northern Gateway pipeline a decade ago. The company has been defending the choice ever since.

For much of the ensuing time, attention has focused tightly on that project.

Oh, sure, the deliberations and demonstrations about the Keystone XL pipeline project in the U.S. were noted, but, until recently, B.C. has concentrated on the Northern Gateway proposal….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Columbia Icefield determines future of downstream benefits of the Columbia River

View of the Columbia Icefield from the visitor centre. Photo © Samantha Marx (@smath.com). via creative commons and flickr

When you stand on the new Glacier Skywalk, just off the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park, you can look down into the depths of the Sunwapta Valley 280 metres beneath your feet and up at the heights of the Continental Divide around you.

Nestled among these peaks is the Columbia Icefield, a massive complex of ice that first formed more than 10,000 years ago. Six kilometres long, almost a kilometre across, and in some places 300 metres thick, it feeds eight major glaciers and three major river systems.

One of these is the Columbia River. This waterway stretches 2,000 kilometres, from its Rocky Mountain headwaters, through eastern B.C. and four U.S. states. It drains a region the size of France, and now encounters 14 dams along its length, including three in this province.

The river is the subject of an international agreement on shared river management. On September 16, 1964—50 years ago this Tuesday—Canada and the U.S. ratified and implemented the Columbia River Treaty….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Open-license systems still require creators be credited

07. September 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: BC Campus, British Columbia, college, copyright, Creative Commons, moral rights, plagiarism, students, university, Victoria Times Colonist

Studying. Photo © Lidyanne Aquino, via creative commons and flickr

An acquaintance who works at a B.C. college tells me she has caught students boldly copying and claiming other people’s work as their own.

“If they just credited the sources, there’d be no problem,” she says. “But they don’t, and they don’t even recognize they’ve broken the law or the college’s code of conduct.”

She says the students are shocked she can tell it’s ripped-off material, they’re shocked when she calls them on it, and they’re especially shocked when they learn their plagiarism could get them kicked out of school or delay their graduation….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Our heritage sites need love, attention and money

Through an aquarium at Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre, Sidney, B.C. Photo © Herb Neufeld, via flickr & creative commons

Picture a community hall on a weekday evening. About 40 people sit in rows. Official-looking sorts look back over the audience.

The people have gathered at this fictitious meeting to discuss the fate of a nearby fictitious historic site/nature centre/community museum/natural or cultural heritage site. Like so many real sites in the region—Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse, the Centre of the Universe, Undersea Gardens, Crystal Gardens, BC Experience, the Soviet Submarine, or Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, to name a few—is no longer open to the public.

For two hours, those gathered have spoken in support of the site. Government Gus has presented how the government, which owns the site, is looking for a new operator—even if it means repurposing the site.

Education Eli has spoken of the site’s value to the community, especially to its youngsters. “It’s the kind of vital enrichment that connects classroom learning to the community,” she says.

Others have spoken, too, suggesting new activities, new uses, new revenue sources. Everyone agrees the site is an important resource. It helps define and focus the community. It creates common identity and builds community spirit….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Undersea Gardens no longer operates in Victoria, B.C.'s Inner Harbour. Photo © Brian Chow, via flickr & creative commons

Province’s nurse practitioners speak out for patients,
need to speak out for the profession, too

27. April 2014 · 1 comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: addiction, affordable health care, B.C. Government, B.C. Nurse Practitioner Association, British Columbia, community health, health-care professionals, nurse practitioners, physicians, regional health authorities, seniors' health care, Victoria Times Colonist

Nurse practitioner. Photo © Doug McIntosh, creative commons via Flickr

The B.C. government sometimes seems to suffer from attention deficit disorder.

Take the case of B.C.’s nurse practitioners. The province began regulating these health-care professionals in 2005. The goal was to increase patient access to health care in an affordable, effective manner.

Many studies show this happens when nurse practitioners are included in the health-care mix.

The government invested in the profession. It supported development of training programs at three B.C. universities. It provided provincial health authorities with money for new nurse-practitioner positions, then salary money for a limited number of new positions until this year.

And then it walked away….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Keiran's World

Seniors need more than 12 minutes of
physical activity each day

Organic, by definition, includes contradictory meanings

Slip, slide and shimmy: Earthquakes on the West Coast

Pipelines prompt protests; Costs will accrue

Columbia Icefield determines future of downstream benefits of the Columbia River

Open-license systems still require creators be credited

Our heritage sites need love, attention and money

Province’s nurse practitioners speak out for patients,
need to speak out for the profession, too

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