Remembering Sister Andrea

Sister Andrea Dumont, the longest-serving religious in Thompson by far when she retired back to Ontario in mid-June to live with other members of her order in a residence in Toronto, at the insistence of her general superior, has died at the age of 86.

Originally from St. Catharines, Ontario. and a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, Sister Andrea arrived in Thompson in 1991 and spent 29 years working here.

Her parents, William Dumont and Orienne Gauthier, were from Quebec.

Sister Andrea graduated as a registered nurse from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing in Toronto in 1955. She worked as a nurse in Windsor and then at the emergency department and in the nursing service office at St. Joseph’s Hospital before seeing a notice from the sisters seeking volunteers for some missionary work, Thompson Citizen editor Ian Graham wrote May 28 in a nice piece on her impending retirement (https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/after-29-years-in-thompson-sister-andrea-dumont-returning-to-toronto-1.24143006).

Sister Andrea entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto in February 1956, and received the habit in August 1956. She made her final profession in August 1961 and celebrated her diamond jubilee in June 2016.

Sister Andrea spent 14 years in Guatemala until the mission closed and after returning to Canada lived in Grand Rapids, Easterville and Thompson, where the main focus of her work was in adult education, which included training lay presiders for times when there is no priest available, organizing and instructing in the various ministries, sacramental preparation and RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). There are no parochial Catholic schools in the area. As well as Guatemala, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto at one time also had foreign missions in Hong Kong, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nicaragua, Honduras and Haiti. They continue to serve in Honduras and Haiti.

In April 2015, she received the St. Joseph Award, the highest honour Catholic Missions in Canada bestows for outstanding missionary work. The Catholic Missions in Canada was founded in 1908 as The Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada. The organization comes to the aid of isolated missions across the country where a lack of resources makes it impossible to maintain a Catholic presence without outside financial help.

Sister Andrea’s order also included some of the same sisters – a fact I only learned here in Thompson years later – that taught some of my high school classes from September 1971 to June 1976, when Sister Conrad Lauber was principal, and Sister Dorothy Schweitzer taught me several English and math classes  at Oshawa Catholic High School (now Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School). Both Sister Conrad and Sister Dorothy, so it turned out, happened to be good friends of Sister Andrea.

About 10 years ago, I asked Father Eugene Whyte, then pastor of St. Lawrence Church here in Thompson, and a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, about the prospects of a particular sister soon retiring. Without missing a beat, Father Eugene’s deadpan reply was, “Nuns don’t really retire, John. Ever.”

I wasn’t quite sure then that was quite literally true, but pretty darn close, I thought as I caught Father Eugene’s drift.

For my Catholic friends, it will come as no surprise for me to say there are at least two other truths in addition to non-retirement about Catholic nuns, always worth remembering: you don’t want to incur their wrath and you can never say “no” to a request from a sister, which usually is stated more in the form of a direction assuming compliance, than an actual question. Such, of course, was the case in my relationship with Sister Andrea.

In November 2010, I had Ryan Flanagan, a new reporter at the Thompson Citizen, which I was editing at the time, write a story on charitable organizations who sold homemade goodies at community events as fundraisers for their many good works. One of his stops that crisp fall Saturday morning was the St. Lawrence Pastoral Centre, where Sister Andrea and other volunteers were making their famous perogies for the upcoming Catholic Women’s League (CWL) Annual Christmas craft sale and raffle, scheduled to be held a few short weeks at St.. Lawrence Parish Hall, and the premier fundraising event of the year for the CWL.

Sure enough, Ryan, would wind up writing, “Among the guidelines are that the event must be registered with Public Health at least 14 working days before it begins, that the event operator must maintain a list of all vendors including contact information, and that any food qualifying as ‘potentially hazardous’ must be prepared and packaged in an approved establishment. Foods qualifying as ‘potentially hazardous’ include antipasto, cabbage rolls, chocolate (unless it has been heated as an ingredient in, for example, chocolate chip cookies), coleslaw, pastries filled with cream or custard, dairy products, fish, garlic spreads, homemade soups, meat or meat products, perogies, pickled eggs, pumpkin pie or any pie with meringue, salsa, ungraded eggs, and whipped butter. None of these foods can be sold unless they were prepared in a facility that has been approved by the province as a food handling establishment” (https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/strict-public-health-rules-in-place-for-volunteer-groups-food-and-bake-sales-1.1368718).

I found myself in Sister Andrea’s “if-looks-could-kill” deep freeze for several months. The gradual thaw came a few months later, as Father Eugene made a point of being extra nice to me (no small feat perhaps, as Father Eugene’s opinion of the media wasn’t so very removed from Sister Andrea’s in general, as I recall, from our many conversations) when Sister Andrea and I were sharing the same space, such as reaching extra far to shake my hand when he was processing at the beginning of mass and I was standing near the end of a pew, perhaps suggesting to Sister Andrea that despite apparent evidence to the contrary, I might not be quite beyond redemption.

Sister Andrea, of course, forgave me in time, which is what sisters do. Within a couple of years she was swapping movie lists with Jeanette and I.

She may have also had the last laugh, as it were, a few years later, although she was also may have just been being practical and solving a problem on the fly on short notice. Or a little of both maybe.

In May 2013, The Christophers, a non-profit organization founded in 1945 by Maryknoll Father James Keller, were in Thompson to offer a Christopher leadership course. The ancient Chinese proverb – “it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness” – guides the organization’s programs. The name of the group is derived from the Greek word “christophoros,” which means “Christ-bearer.”

The Christopher leadership courses teaches participants speaking skills to organize ideas an think on their feet; conquer shyness or fear of public-speaking; speak with conviction and “captivate” their audience; and effectively express themselves in business, socially, in the community and in the larger world.

The New York City-based Christophers emerged in the wake of the Second World War, with the rapid dawn soon after of the Cold War, as periodic historical suspicions of Roman Catholic loyalties in the United States re-emerged in the public conspicuousness. In response, a number of Roman Catholics began to find new ways of commending the Church to the public, including the new medium of television. The most popular and influential television presentation was The Christophers, a weekly half-hour program aired on ABC beginning in 1945. The Christophers, as Keller, from Oakland, California envisioned it, would have no formal organization, no memberships, and no dues. “The reason for this somewhat unusual formula,” he explained, “was to focus attention on personal responsibility.”

The wrap-up to the Thompson Christopher leadership course seven years ago was to be held on Saturday, May 4, and was to feature a keynote speech from Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie, who had just recently become the most recent archbishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas.  However, plans changed at the last minute, and His Grace was unable to keep the speaking engagement.

Sister Andrea telephoned me around mid-afternoon on Friday, May 3 in my office at the paper. And that was how I came to fill in with less than 24 hours notice for the archbishop – a sad disappointment I’m sure to unsuspecting participants – as the keynote speaker for the wrap-up session.

I’m not sure, but I could swear I saw a grin on Sister Andrea’s face, as I mercifully finished up, and heard from somewhere above me a good-natured celestial “got you.”

The last time I wrote about Sister Andrea until today was in an email I sent to Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook May 30:

“I was thinking about the departure of Sister Andrea next month back to Toronto, after being recalled at the age of 86, after 29 years in Thompson  by her religious order, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, and it occurred to me that I could think of no one any worthier to receive a Key to the City of Thompson than Sister Andrea. I also know it is an infrequently bestowed honour, but having known several of the previous recipients over the last decade – Dr. Alan Rich, when he departed for Swan River in 2014, and provincial court Judge Murray Thompson, and his wife, Linda Webstob, when they moved to Winnipeg the same year – left me thinking  Sister Andrea would be in good company with those keyholders of high character and purpose, and vice versa.”

I don’t know if the City of Thompson has ever awarded a Key to the City posthumously, but I think, if not, Sister Andrea would still be a good candidate for one, after touching so many lives, Catholic and non-Catholic, during her 29 years of service in Thompson, Manitoba.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Dr. Alan Rich, who served longer than any other doctor in Thompson, has passed away

Thompson’s best-loved doctor has passed away.

The legendary, and at times controversial, Dr. Alan Rich, who still holds the record as Thompson’s longest-serving physician, having practiced medicine here for more than 40 years, died earlier today.

Dr. Rich, who died in Swan River, was 73. There will be visitation at the Boardman/Northland Funeral Home at 28 Nelson Rd. here in Thompson, Manitoba next Sunday evening on Jan. 27 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The funeral service will follow next Monday morning at 10 a.m. on Jan. 28 at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church at 114 Cree Rd. in Thompson. Internment will be at Thompson Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Dr. Rich’s memory to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada, a registered charity founded in 1983, which helps children with critical and life-threatening illnesses live out their biggest wishes. The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada granted 615 wishes to Canadian children with life-threatening illnesses in 2017, spending an average of $13,268 per wish granted. Their charitable registration number is 89526 9173 RR0001 and their address is Make-A-Wish Foundation of Canada, 4211 Yonge St.,  Suite 520, Toronto, Ontario, M2P 2A9. Their website can be found at http://www.makeawish.ca

Sent packing from Thompson General Hospital into retirement in 2011 after a high-profile dispute with two other doctors on the old Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) medical staff, just three years later he was presented with the Key to the City of Thompson on Oct. 6, 2014, the city’s highest and infrequently bestowed honour, by then Mayor Tim Johnston and then Coun. Stella Locker, a registered nurse, who was council’s longest-serving member at the time. Dr. Rich had moved to Swan River a number of years ago.

“Al, from me to you, I want to say thank you for your commitment, thank you for your dedication, and I am happy to say that no one has played more of an important role in the health care of Thompsonites, and Northerners, than Dr. Alan Rich. You are to be thanked for the commitment you made,” the mayor said at the awards ceremony at city hall in 2014.

Even after his departure from Thompson General Hospital, Dr. Rich continued to practice medicine for quite a while from both from his office in the Professional Building on Selkirk Avenue, where he had been a long-time tenant of J.B. Johnston Ventures Limited, Tim Johnston’s family property holding company, and in his new home in Swan River, where Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) granted him hospital privileges at Swan River Valley Hospital. Born and raised in Thompson, Tim Johnston, of course, is the son of Dr. Blain Johnston, a former city councillor who was the first regular, full-time doctor in Thompson.

Dr. Rich graduated from the University of Saskatchewan as a doctor of medicine on May 13, 1971. He started practicing medicine in Thompson the following year, after completing his residency internship at Queen Elizabeth Hospital of Montreal in June 1972. Over the course of his long medical career, Rich worked as a general practitioner, worked in CancerCare, was an anesthetist, oversaw dialysis, and worked as a medical examiner. Dr. Rich had originally arrived in Thompson from Saskatchewan as a summer student to work underground at Inco. He hoped to make enough money working in the mines during summers to put himself through medical school, which he did. In Saskatchewan, Dr. Rich as a young man, had worked on the Herriman family farm in Creelman, southeast of Regina. He returned to Thompson to open up his practice after graduating. Dr. Rich was also a high-calibre judo competitor, coaching and training judo practitioners, as well as serving as team physician for the Thompson Hawks, a senior amateur men’s hockey team. Their best season was in 1974-75 when they won the Edmonton Journal Trophy (Western Canada Intermediate Championship) but lost in the Hardy Cup Championship (Canadian Intermediate A Championship) that season to the Moncton Bears, the Eastern Canada champions.

On April 9, 2013, he was presented with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, created to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne, by Swan River Mayor Glen McKenzie.  “It was a surprise,” Twyla Machan, editor of the local Swan Valley Star & Times, quoted Rich as saying in receiving the award. “In Thompson, I was on the wrong side of political decisions, but I am a doctor with no limitations.” Discussing his move to Swan River where he set up a practice, Rich told the Star & Times he was enjoying it there. “It’s a lot of fun. This is a very good place. I retired here, and I will spend the rest of my days here I think.”

Dr. Rich always provoked strong feelings among Thompson residents, many of whom he delivered. He was legendary for making house calls or dropping by unannounced after an 18 or 20-hour day at the hospital and his office because he was concerned how a patient was doing and wanted to check in on them. He had a knack for identifying what was ailing someone when other doctors may not have been able to put their finger on the problem so quickly, as his many loyal patients attested to  over the years. He may have even saved the odd cherished pet along the way, but there is no official record of such.

While some found the bearded Dr. Rich, clad in his leather motorcycle jacket and jeans, which he was attired in when he picked up the Key to the City of Thompson in 2014, a tad brusque in his bedside manner, folks in this hardrock nickel mining town generally liked his no-BS plain-speaking ways.  Besides, his YellowPages ad did say he was “friendly, courteous and understanding.” If he had his eccentricities, don’t we all? Live and let live is a way of life in the North.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Soundingsjohnbarker: ‘You can write that?’ You bet

https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/) debuted as a WordPress blog two years ago today with a small post headlined “Labour history: Mine-Mill v. Steel” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/labour-history-mine-mill-v-steel/) on September 3, 2014 about Mick Lowe’s The Raids, a 295-page fictionalized work centred on the epic battle in Sudbury in the late 1950s and early 1960s in relation to the Cold War, international politics, McCarthyism, Communism, and the inter-union rivalry between the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Local 598, which had just been published that May by Robin Philpot of Baraka Books in Montreal. Here in Thompson there is a still partially untold story of that same inter-union rivalry between the Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers and United Steelworkers of America between 1960 and 1962. Mine-Mill was the first bargaining agent here in Thompson when Inco workers unionized and had negotiated a contract with Inco that ran through 1964. But the USW was certified by the Manitoba Labour Board as the bargaining agent for Inco employees in Thompson on May 31, 1962. Because the USW itself went on to merge five years later with the United States section of the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers in Tucson, Arizona in January 1967, a lot of that nastiness has been papered over, at least publicly.

There was also a post that day headlined “Black Death: Not so bad?” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/black-death-not-so-bad/) which went onto explain a new study in PLOS ONE, an international peer-reviewed journal, authored by University of South Carolina anthropologist Sharon DeWitte, which suggested that people who survived the medieval plague, commonly known then as the Black Death, lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347. The Black Death killed tens of millions of people, an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of the European population, over just four years between 1347 and 1351, which, it turns out, may not have been such a bad thing after all.

Finally, on Sept. 3, 2014, soundingsjohnbarker had a third posting headlined “A bigger picture,” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/a-bigger-picture/) which focused on Samaritan’s Purse’s “Operation Christmas Child,” which was started in 1990. By 1993, it had grown to the point it was adopted by Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization founded by Dr. Bob Pierce in 1970 and now run by Franklin Graham, son of 97-year-old Asheville, North Carolina evangelist Billy Graham.  While “Operation Christmas Child” has its share of supporters and critics with meritorious arguments on both sides for and against its “shoebox” gifts collected and distributed in more than 130 countries worldwide each Christmas [each shoebox is filled with hygiene items, school supplies, toys, and candy. Operation Christmas Child then works with local churches to put on age-appropriate presentations of the gospel at the events where the shoeboxes are distributed], Samaritan’s Purse is about much more than Operation Christmas Child, whatever your views might be on that, I pointed out. In the midst of the deadliest Ebola viral hemorrhagic fever outbreak recorded in West Africa since the disease was discovered in 1976, Samaritan Purse’s Ebola care centre on the outskirts of the Liberian capital of Monrovia was right on the front lines. Dr. Kent Brantly, the medical director of the centre, contracted Ebola and was medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first patient ever medically evacuated to the United States for Ebola treatment, where he was given ZMapp, an experimental drug treatment produced by U.S.-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, while Nancy Writebol, who was with Serving in Mission, (SIM), which runs the hospital where Samaritan’s Purse has the Ebola care centre, was also medically evacuated to Emory University Hospital and treated with ZMapp.  Both Brantly and Writebol survived their brush with death Ebola experiences and returned to Liberia.

So that was Day 1 for soundingsjohnbarker on Sept. 3, 2014. And in some ways it set the tone for the 226 posts that have followed since over the last two years. Some of them tell Thompson stories but many don’t. Some (OK, many) are offbeat and the range of topics that has struck my fancy to write about has been eclectic, if not downright eccentric at times. I explained some of my thinking behind how I choose what to write about in a blog post March 7 headlined “Tipping points and blogging by the numbers” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/tipping-points-and-blogging-by-the-numbers/) where I noted, “Write local if you want some big numbers on a given day. While I do from time to time, if some local issue or story interests me in an unusual way, I stay away from that kind of writing for the most part. For one thing, those kind of stories, I find, have little staying power, with three or four rare local exceptions (an unsolved murder story; a story about Dr. Alan Rich’s retirement and local lawyer Alain Huberdeau’s appointment to the provincial court bench; and several Vale stories come to mind). But most of them are one or two day wonders. It’s the more eccentric pieces on other places and even times that have a deeper and wider audience in the long run. Fortunately, I prefer to write on more eclectic things these days without any particular regard for geography or subject matter if the topic strikes my interest. Thompson city council may well make decisions that affect me in myriad ways, not the least of which is in the pocketbook as a local taxpayer, but even that can’t remove the glaze from my eyes long enough to write much about local municipal politics, although our water bills are tempting me to make an exception. But reading newspaper accounts of such goings on is usually painful enough. Mind you, I realize what strikes my fancy to write about when I don’t write local, is not for everyone, and I have no doubt that I’ve created some eye glazing of my own especially when I write on eschatology or some other arcane to some of my local readers religious topic.”

That’s not to say I’ve lost my interest in local affairs. I live here after all. But I don’t have the inclination, or time even if I had, to write about all of them. So, pretty much like everyone else in Thompson, I rely on the local media, including the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News, CBC Radio’s North Country, Arctic Radio’s thompsononline.ca and Shaw TV to keep me informed with occasional stories about Vale’s proposed Thompson Foot Wall Deep Project, at the north end of Thompson Mine, previously known as Thompson (1D), and what the chances of the 11 million tonnes of nickel mineralization, which form a deep, north plunging continuation of the Thompson deposit, have of being developed into a new mine that will sustain the Thompson operation for up to 15 years when nickel is selling on the London Metal Exchange (LME) for US$4.5269/lb, with the refinery and smelter, which opened March 25, 1961, set to close sometime in 2018, resulting in lost jobs – don’t kid yourself and think otherwise – as more than 30 per cent of Vale’s production employees in Thompson work in the smelter and refinery.

Take away nickel mining, which isn’t destined fortunately to happen for at least several decades yet in even the most pessimistic scenario, and there’s not much reason for Thompson, at least as we have all come to know it, to exist, all mindless happy talk from politicians, newspaper publishers and other spin doctors aside. Mind you, I have admittedly been a tad critical of newspaper publishers in this space before, writing on Sept. 14, 2014: “In the old days, publishers and newspaper owners would from time to time ‘kill’ a writer’s column before publication. Despite their ballyhoo and blather about freedom of the press, publishers and newspaper proprietors are almost universally in my long experience with them a timid lot, if not outright moral cowards at times, always afraid of offending someone.”(https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/retroactively-spiked-the-post-publication-killing-of-msgr-charles-popes-blog-post-on-new-york-citys-st-patricks-day-parade/).

But if you think being a regional hub for Northern Manitoba, or tourism, or even both, is going to give Thompson a new raison d’etre for continued existence at its current size and state in a somehow magically more diversified local economy sans nickel mining some day in the near-to-mid future, I’m afraid you’ve been drinking too much of the Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG) Kool-Aid.

I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to the local good news peddlers of all stripes. So it’s perhaps best for everyone’s peace of mind, mine included, if I stick these days to writing mainly about the faraway and eclectic. Bad news prophets have a short best-before date at home.

And besides there is something just plain fun about writing about the weird and whacky. It’s a good antidote to taking either yourself, or life for that matter, too seriously. Hence I’m just as incorrigible when it comes to posting stories or links from others about the offbeat and odd on Facebook, as I am about my own blog post writing, I must confess. “The internet has been aflame this summer with predictions the Antichrist was coming Aug. 30,” I mentioned in a Facebook posting Aug, 31, noting I had forgotten all about it until the next day. “Me bad,” I wrote. When my old friend from Iqaluit Michèle LeTourneau found herself among those who couldn’t resist joining the thread to comment, she observed “OK. I think I just officially outed myself as a weird nut that posts really weird things on Facebook. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” I reassured her by replying, “I think I could give you a bit of competition for the ‘weird nut Facebook poster’ title, Michèle!”

Locally, the Thompson Citizen was moved to editorialize Aug. 31 that “Northern Manitoba’s summer of woe turned [a] deeper shade of blue with the announcement Aug. 22 that Tolko was shutting down its operations in The Pas.”

Tolko Industries said they were going to pull the plug Dec. 2 on their heavy-duty kraft paper and lumber mill in The Pas after 19 years, leaving all 332 employees unemployed. The mill in The Pas has been a money-loser for years. It was conceived by the Progressive Conservative provincial government of premier Duff Roblin in 1966.

Less than a month before Tolko pulled the plug on its mill in The Pas, OmniTRAX, the Denver-based short line railroad, which owns the Port of Churchill, announced on July 25 it would be laying off or not re-hiring about 90 port workers, as it was cancelling the 2016 grain shipping season. OmniTRAX bought most of Northern Manitoba’s rail track from The Pas to Churchill in 1997 from CN for $11 million. OmniTRAX took over the related Port of Churchill, which opened in 1929, when it acquired it from Canada Ports Corporation, for a token $10 soon after buying the rail line. The Port of Churchill has the largest fuel terminal in the Arctic and is North America’s only deep water Arctic seaport that offers a gateway between North America and Mexico, South America, Europe and the Middle East. OmniTRAX created Hudson Bay Railway in 1997, the same year it took over operation of the Port of Churchill. It operates 820 kilometres of track in Manitoba between The Pas and Churchill.

At the time the cancellation was announced, OmniTRAX did not have a single committed grain shipping contract. Normally, the Port of Churchill has a 14-week shipping season from July 15 to Oct. 31. When the Canadian Wheat Board lost its grain monopoly, creating a new grain market several years ago, and was renamed G3 Canada Ltd. by its new owners, the newly-minted G3 Canada Ltd. began building a network of grain elevators, terminals and vessels that bypasses Churchill and uses the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River and West Coast to move grain to foreign markets. Surprise.

While OmniTRAX accepted a letter of intent last December from Mathias Colomb First Nation, Tataskweyak Cree Nation and the War Lake First Nation to buy its rail assets in Manitoba, along with the Port of Churchill, the deal has not been completed to date, and its future looks murky to non-existent. Rail freight shipments measured by frequency along the Bayline have been cut in half by OmniTRAX this summer.

“Government announces more grant money to develop tourism during visit to Churchill” headlined the Nickel Belt News in an unbylined front page story Sept. 2.  Don’t get me wrong. I love Beluga whales and polar bears. I’ve seen both visiting Churchill (known as Kuugjuaq in Inuit.) And guess what? While Beluga whales and polar bears will support some local tourism and related businesses, it’s still not enough to make for a local sustainable economy of any scale in the community of less than 800 permanent residents now along our Hudson Bay coast.

That’s about as likely to happen as calling itself the “Wolf Capital of the World” is going make a game-changing difference to Thompson’s economic future. A difference, sure. Great. But don’t bet Northern Manitoba’s future on tourism. We’re still either a resource-based economy or no economy to speak of.  If it’s any comfort that remains largely true for most of our provinces and territories and Canada as a whole. Sure there’s the capital cities and a few other kinda largish provincial cities – Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Québec City, Moncton, Saint John, Halifax and St. John’s (this is a very generous reading BTW) – and even a few more genuine high-tech areas such as Gatineau, Québec and Kanata, Ontario on either side of Ottawa, along with Kitchener, Ontario and elsewhere in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, all of which are exceptions to the hewers of wood and drawers of water reality, but the exceptions are few and far between.

Oops … did I say that out loud? Me bad.

Kool-Aid anyone?

I may need to quench my thirst unless I intend to pen my next post on UFOs, eschatology or perhaps some virulent disease, preferably a safe distance from Thompson.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tipping points and blogging by the numbers

I have been blogging at soundingsjohnbarker (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/) for about a year and a half now. Recently I reached some kind of magical tipping point where I no longer have to write anything, at least for the foreseeable future, to garner more than 100 readers a day on average. It’s got so easy, I missed marking the few days it took to go from 49,000 readers to 50,000 readers because I hadn’t been looking at my stats much (the bane of every self-respecting blogger, or so it seems anyway) because I hadn’t written anything new since Feb. 16.

Not that it really matters much. Even if they were inclined to disclose such proprietary information, which they’re not for the most part, I’m not mathematically enough gifted to really understand how various Google and Facebook algorithms work, so I can’t explain why this is so.

I do know this: About 75 per cent of the daily views right now on the almost 200 posts I’ve written since September 2014 come from my home or landing page on the blog, with a handful of stories, or blog posts, if you will, garnering views of at least one or two readers somewhere in the world every day.

I’m delighted to say “Red Barn, Big Barney and the Barnbuster” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/red-barn-big-barney-and-the-barnbuster/) one of my early posts from Sept. 13, 2014 joined that rarefied company of posts recently. On an ordinary day, readers in about a dozen or more countries around the globe read what I have written here. The makeup of the countries changes somewhat but the overall number of 12 or slightly more on a daily basis, has been the same almost from the beginning. It doesn’t go up or down much.

It seems that the majority of the stories being read right now, where a reader goes to a specific story rather than my homepage, come disproportionally from my earlier work, say between September 2014 and last May. Is that because I wrote better stuff back then? Possibly. But I think it more likely has a lot to do with the mysteries of Google search and how things cycle around the World Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet. I expect perhaps that in six months from now, some of the stories I’ve penned more recently will find their stride.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few tricks, of course. Write local if you want some big numbers on a given day. While I do from time to time, if some local issue or story interests me in an unusual way, I stay away from that kind of writing for the most part. For one thing, those kind of stories, I find, have little staying power, with three or four rare local exceptions (an unsolved murder story; a story about Dr. Alan Rich’s retirement last year and local lawyer Alain Huberdeau’s appointment to the provincial court bench; and several Vale stories come to mind). But most of them are one or two day wonders. It’s the more eccentric pieces on other places and even times that have a deeper and wider audience in the long run. Fortunately, I prefer to write on more eclectic things these days without any particular regard for geography or subject matter if the topic strikes my interest. Thompson city council may well make decisions that affect me in myriad ways, not the least of which is in the pocketbook as a local taxpayer, but even that can’t remove the glaze from my eyes long enough to write much about local municipal politics, although our water bills are tempting me to make an exception. But reading newspaper accounts of such goings on is usually painful enough. Mind you, I realize what strikes my fancy to write about when I don’t write local, is not for everyone, and I have no doubt that I’ve created some eye glazing of my own especially when I write on eschatology or some other arcane to some of my local readers religious topic.

The other thing I’ve learned is a bit about the value of tags and search engine optimization. And what I’ve learned, I must confess, is not exactly high culture or high-minded for that matter. Sex sells. Sizzle sells. Self-referential sells. Surprise!

My leading search engine terms today are: “hot tub high school; Lauren German hot tub school; MKO audit; Red Barn restaurant; LBJ sworn in” and “hot tub high school movie.” If you detect a theme, it is actually from a more recent story Jan. 29 headlined, “Fox TV’s Lucifer Morningstar and normalizing evil: Does the devil get any cuddlier?” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/fox-tvs-lucifer-morningstar-and-normalizing-evil-does-the-devil-get-any-cuddlier/) where I wrote, “Multiple references by Morningstar to Dancer about her briefly being a B-list actress, best known for her topless scenes in a movie called Hot Tub High School, before she became a cop, like her dad, are not accompanied by flashbacks, although Neil Genzlinger in his New York Times review, described the devil in Lucifer as having the “sexist, salacious mind-set of a 14-year-old boy” when it comes to Chloe.”

Perhaps destined to join the ranks of stories read daily in a few months?

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Local baseball legend Red Sangster given Key to the City of Thompson on 90th birthday

1968-69 Manitoba champion Thompson Reds. Back row left to right: Red Sangster (manager), Vern Bentley, Keith Redman, Earl Hodges, Doug Bentley, Forbes Stewart, George Goghill, Barry MacLean, Steve Sobko, Dale McDougall, Ross Papineau (president). Front: Bernie McLellan, Marcel Champagne, John Stewart, Russell Zushman, Jerry Holmstrom, Ken Hanke, Jack Sangster and Alex “Suds” Sutherland – Photo courtesy of Jack Sangster and Canadian Baseball Network

For the second time in 10 days, the City of Thompson has presented a Key to the City, the city’s highest and usually infrequently bestowed honour,  this time giving it to the legendary local baseball promoter Alexander “Red” Sangster on the occasion of his 90th birthday Oct. 15.

Dr. Alan Rich, the city’s longest-serving physician, who now lives in Swan River and practices there and here part-time,  was presented with the Key to the City of Thompson Oct. 6 (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/dr-alan-rich-the-citys-longest-serving-physician-sent-packing-into-retirement-in-2011-presented-with-the-key-to-the-city-of-thompson/)

The honour was again presented by Mayor Tim Johnston, in his final nine days as mayor after eight years in office, on behalf of the City of Thompson. A Key to the City hon ours those who have made major contributions to the community and its surroundings over an extensive period of time. Johnston was joined in the presentation to Sangster by deputy mayor Dennis  Fenske, Coun. Stella Locker, the longest-serving member of council, and city manager Gary Ceppetelli.

Sangster’s named is so synonymous with baseball in Thompson, the Red Sangster Ball Field, constructed in 1968, was named after him in 1992. The ballpark was built mostly by hand and required clearing trees that were then used to make a fence for the Thompson Zoo, which Sangster had paired up with Hawley Duncan and Len Fenske to start.

Engraved on Sangster’s Key to the City of Thompson are the words,  “In recognition of your outstanding commitment and dedication to the advancement of Recreation and Sport in the City of Thompson.”

In an official Oct. 16 news release announcing the honour, the City of Thompson noted, “It is said that many of the City of Thompson’s early employees were recruits of Red’s not only for their professional skills, but also for their athletic abilities.” Unofficially, it might well be said that “Red’s Ringers” were the stuff of local, indeed provincial, sports legend in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Born in 1924 on a farm near Walkerburn, Sangster, told started playing baseball when he was 15. He first came to Northern Manitoba by way of Snow Lake and later Thompson in 1960 as an employee of Paddy Harrison, working as a mechanic underground at the Moak Lake site. He returned to Thompson in 1961 when Inco began production, and worked as a mechanic at the mill for six months. Soon after, he would begin working the Local Government District of Mystery Lake as a grader operator, grading roads in the summer and plowing snow in the winter. He did that for 18 years.

Sangster  wore many work hats over the years. As well as being appointed as director of recreation for the Town of Thompson in October 1968,  he also had a long tenure, extending to recent years, first with Carling O’Keefe Breweries, and later with  Molson Canada, as their representative in Northern Manitoba.

He was inducted into the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997, while the Thompson Reds, also named for Sangster, from the period between 1968 and 1973 were inducted in the special team category in 2003.

Baseball, however, has not been Sangster’s only local sports interest. As far back as 1968, Sangster, who managed the Thompson Midget Aces, was named Minor Hockey Volunteer of the year by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. He was also helped guide the Thompson Hawks, a men’s senior amateur team, coached by Terry Grindle for the 1972-73 season, which played in the Canadian Central Hockey League (CCHL) from 1972 to 1974. Dr. Rich was the team doctor. Made up of a good number of semi and minor pros,  the roster included Jack Sangster, Red’s son; Gerald Fenske; Keith Redman; and Alex “Suds” Sutherland, who would also one day go on to be a City of Thompson recreation director.

In 1970, he won a Manitoba Historical Society Centennial Medal with the citation reading, “For his great contribution to sports and recreation in Thompson.” In 1983, he was named Citizen of the Year Award by the Thompson Lions Club.

Even so, Sangster faced a big curve ball when the University College of the North (UCN) wanted to build its new campus student housing behind the Thompson Regional Community Centre (TRCC), which would have meant the ball field would have to be obliterated in its current location and moved elsewhere.

For a five-month period between October 2009 and March 2010, UCN, the City of Thompson and Province of Manitoba were intent on moving Red Sangster Ball Field.

Following a public outcry, UCN backed off and relocated its student housing slightly to the southwest, saving the Red Sangster Ball Field.

Sangster also received one of the 60,000 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for presentation to civic-minded Canadians, created by the Royal Canadian Mint to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne, on Oct. 20, 2012. As well, he was named by Our Foundation Thompson, formerly known as the Thompson Community Foundation, which was formed in 1995,  on Sept. 28, 2012 as  as the recipient of  its third annual Order of Thompson award.

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Dr. Alan Rich, the city’s longest-serving physician, sent packing into retirement in 2011, presented with the Key to the City of Thompson

Dr. Alan Rich, left, receiving the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal last year in Swan River. Photo courtesy of Twyla Machan, Swan Valley Star & Times; Right a YellowPages ad for Dr.Rich’s office in the Professional Building in Thompson.

Thompson’s legendary, and at times controversial, Dr. Alan Rich, the city’s longest-serving physician who was sent packing from Thompson General Hospital into retirement in 2011 after a high-profile dispute with two other doctors on the medical staff, was presented with the Key to the City of Thompson Oct. 6, the city’s highest and infrequently bestowed honour,  by Mayor Tim Johnston and Coun. Stella Locker, a registered nurse and council’s longest-serving member.

Rich has always provoked strong feelings among Thompson residents, many of whom he delivered. He was legendary for making house calls or dropping by unannounced after an 18 or 20-hour day at the hospital and his office because he was concerned how a patient was doing and wanted to check in on them. He had a knack for identifying what was ailing someone when other doctors may not have been able to put their finger on the problem so quickly, as his many loyal patients attested to  over the years. He may have even saved the odd cherished pet along the way, but there is no official record of such.

While some found the bearded Dr. Rich, clad in his leather motorcycle jacket and jeans, which he was attired in Monday night to pick up the Key to the City of Thompson, a tad brusque in his bedside manner, folks in this hardrock nickel mining town generally liked his no-BS plain-speaking ways.  Besides, his YellowPages ad did say he was “friendly, courteous and understanding.” If he had his eccentricities, don’t we all? Live and let live is a way of life in the North.

Rich, a graduate of McGill University faculty of medicine in Montreal, began practicing medicine in Thompson in September 1972.  Over the course of his long medical career, Rich has worked as a general practitioner, worked in CancerCare, was an anesthetist, oversaw dialysis, and worked as a medical examiner. On April 9, 2013, he was presented with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal,  created to mark the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne, by Swan River Mayor Glen McKenzie.  “It was a surprise,” Twyla Machan, editor of the local Swan Valley Star & Times, quoted Rich as saying in receiving the award. “In Thompson, I was on the wrong side of political decisions, but I am a doctor with no limitations.” Discussing his move to Swan River where he set up a practice, Rich told the Star & Times he was enjoying it there. “It’s a lot of fun. This is a very good place. I retired here, and I will spend the rest of my days here I think.”

Rich’s 39-year career with the old Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) ended badly after a high profile dispute with Dr. Hisham Tassi, an internist, and Dr. Hussam Azzam, vice-president of medical services.

Tassi and Azzam filed complaints against Rich in relation to his behavior and comments in earlier meetings with them, which they said had been inappropriate.  The complaint by Azzam stemmed from a Jan. 13, 2011 meeting between Azzam, acting in his capacity as the vice-president of medical services, regional chief of staff and chair of the BRHA medical advisory committee (MAC), and Rich during which, Azzam alleged, Rich shouted and pointed his finger at Azzam.

“I strongly feel that Dr. Rich’s behavior and comments were inappropriate, abusive, slanderous and defamatory,” Azzam wrote in a letter of complaint to BRHA chief executive officer Gloria King.
Tassi’s complaint concerned an Aug. 24, 2010 meeting between Tassi and Rich. During that meeting, Tassi alleged, Rich informed Tassi that he would be acting as a witness for a patient who had filed a complaint with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba (CPSM). The college does not provide information about complaints it receives unless disciplinary action is taken. It has never provided information suggesting Tassi has been subject to disciplinary action.

The BRHA medical advisory committee’s complaint resolution sub-committee – which at the time consisted of chair Dr. Christoffel Vermaak, Dr. Gabriel Anid, Dr. Eman Yousif, Dr. Ginette Poulin and Dr. Wali Kassem –  heard submissions and questioned witnesses on the matter and the full medical advisory committee (MAC) then considered the case on May 31, 2011 after earlier attempts at informal resolution failed. Rich had offered to apologize to Azzam but disagreed over what form the apology would take.

The BRHA’s position was that they did not initially request that Rich retire, but rather that his  retirement was discussed by counsel for the parties and an agreement was ultimately reached.

Rich continued to practice medicine from his office in the Professional Building on Selkirk Avenue, where he had been a long-time tenant of J.B. Johnston Ventures Limited, Mayor Johnston’s family property holding company, and in Swan River, where Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) granted him hospital privileges at Swan River Valley Hospital. Born and raised in Thompson, Tim Johnston is the son of Dr. Blain Johnston, a former city councillor who was the first regular, full-time doctor in Thompson.

A year after the Rich saga, the Thompson-based BRHA was merged by the province with the NOR-MAN Regional Health Authority (NRHA) in Flin Flon, with the single entity being re-named as the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) and has maintained a fairly low public profile and largely, especially in Thompson, stayed out of headline-making controversies.

The Northern Regional Health Authority covers about 61 per cent of Manitoba’s landmass and provide primary health care services for some 73,000 people – or about six per cent of the province’s population. Excluding hamlets, cottage settlements and Saskatchewan towns near the Manitoba border, the new NRHA provides health care services to 46 communities in an area bounded roughly by The Pas in the southwest to St. Theresa Point in the southeast and everything north to the Nunavut boundary at the 60th parallel – with the exception of Churchill, with the tiny Churchill Regional Health Authority merged two years ago with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, as the two bodies were already closely connected, the province said.

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