Who is Jim Hillyer?

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 20 Comments

It remains unclear who the people of Lethbridge just elected.

He was dubbed The Man Who Wasn’t There – Jim Hillyer, a first-time Conservative candidate in the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge … He earned his moniker from a local newspaper after failing to show up at a pair of debates, repeatedly refusing interview requests and declining to speak to a local blogger who used Twitter to track him down while he was door knocking, an activity he said was more important. (In a video of the encounter posted online, Mr. Hillyer said he couldn’t talk because he had to use the bathroom.)

If nothing else, this election may be moving us closer to confronting some of the questions about the role and relevance of our MPs that are central to the current state of the House of Commons.

Lethbridge flourishes, Alberta fails

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 11 Comments

Some good and some bad news regarding Alberta’s health care system. First the bad: the median time it takes to get a bed after arriving at provincial ERs is more than 14 hours, up from 11 in 2007 (by comparison, the median wait time in Ontario is 12.1 hours). Now the good: most patients at Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge get a bed in just three hours, and 30 per cent of those visiting the ER see a doctor within half an hour—far, far quicker than the provincial average of 2.6 hours. “Chinook’s getting better and the province is getting worse,” says Dr. John Cowell, chief executive officer of the Health Quality Council of Alberta.

Diane Shanks, Chinook’s director of emergency care, says the hospital used private consultants, and a grant from the province, to develop a dedicated approach to keeping wait times down. “The in-patient unit, the seniors’ outflow and community care groups, the lab, ICU, everybody is working to make sure we keep people in beds when they should be in beds, and trying not to delay moving them to where they need to go for the best care,” she says.

Following that integrated model, Chinook staff have a daily “bed huddle” that examines expected discharges and admissions, and tries to ensure there will be enough space before patients arrive. The hospital also emphasizes communication between departments to prevent unnecessary retesting and help stop bottlenecks. “In the past, beds were emergency’s problem,” says Vanessa Maclean, medical director for Alberta Health’s south zone. “Now everybody is responsible for how patients flow through the hospital.”

Continue…

A Canadian icon rediscovered

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 1 Comment

“It’s like entering a forest,” says architect Simon Scott, pausing outside the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, designed by architect Arthur Erickson, whose death last week, at 84, saddened design fans everywhere. Scott, who worked at Erickson’s firm while he designed the museum, steps through a row of Douglas fir and western red cedar into a dark entranceway. As you walk down a steep, black ramp—nowhere near wheelchair code—sunlight sneaks through skylights, “like light coming down through the trees,” he explains. Gradually, the room gets bigger, and brighter, until “you see this immense sky,” he says, pointing to 70-foot windows, the ocean just beyond it. A forest clearing was the intent—the Great Hall is filled with towering Haida totem poles, painted in red, green and black.

Widely considered Erickson’s master work, the museum was completed in 1976. Three years later, in a 27-page New Yorker profile, eminent U.S. architect Philip Johnson declared Erickson “by far the greatest architect in Canada, and maybe the greatest on this continent.” Flooded with blue-ribbon corporate and institutional clients, and with two universities (Simon Fraser and Lethbridge) as well as Vancouver’s downtown courthouse complex under his belt, Erickson would nevertheless soon see his sterling reputation tumble—partly a reaction to shifting styles, partly his own doing.

Continue…