The things we
search for and rarely find
by
Robert LaFrance
Christopher Columbus - or whatever his real name was
- spent a lot of time looking for what was then called The New World. I don’t
know what Amelia Earhart was searching for, but after she lost her way flying
over the Pacific Ocean in the 1930s, people spent a lot of time searching for
her. I have been watching the fiasco known as 'The F-35 Affair" in which
federal Defence Minister Peter McKay has been searching for some integrity,
telling every story but the truth.
A Spaniard named Juan Ponce de Leon spent a lot of
time around Florida in the late fifteenth century looking for the legendary
Fountain of Youth. The newspaperman who became Lord Stanley looked in every bar
in Africa until he found Dr. Livingstone.
What's the point of my mentioning these things? I’m
thinking about Rowena, the place, where (going by the evidence) the government
has somehow misplaced the yellow line on Highway 390 that goes through there.
Most secondary roads have yellow (white when I was a
kid) centre lines, but somehow the centre line on the road through Rowena got
misplaced; I pretty nearly swamped my old 2000 Intrepid as I was driving
through Rowena and on my way to Picadilly where I had read there was a circus
going on.
It was foggy and trying to snow and I couldn't quite
make out where the ditch was in relation to where Bob was. I slowed down to a
near crawl and rolled down the window to try and see the centre line, but like
Peter McKay's integrity, it didn't exist.
What did exist was the ditch about five feet from
the LEFT side of the car which meant that if I continued on my present course I
would end up in disaster. This was remarkably similar to what Miss Sara
Williams, my high school English teacher, used to tell me. My Latin teacher,
Mrs. Maybelle Titus, gave me similar warnings, as did my Chemistry Teacher
Ellsworth DeMerchant who told me that he faithfully reads this column. All
those warning, while accurate, didn't deter me from ending up in the
circumstances I just described - driving through Rowena in a fog and on the
wrong side of the road.
Here is my request for whoever is in charge of roads
and is holding many truckloads of rolled-up lines in his warehouse: slap some
down on the road through Rowena, just for me.
************************************
I continue to be bemused (not to be confused with
‘amused’) by our provincial Health Minister, Ted Flemming. As I mentioned
before, he reached in his Tickle Trunk and came up with the promise of a new
hospital for Perth-Andover without, it appears, really looking deeply into what
can be done at the present location. While this kind of ‘thinking’ is common
among those who breathe only the rarefied air of Fredericton, it seems to me
that logic has been brushed aside – also a common thing in Fredericton.
The first number I heard for the proposed new
hospital – if I’m not guilty of exaggeration by using that word – was eight or
nine million dollars, but then the number $17 million has crept in. If that is
meant to keep the people quiet, it’s not working. We have heard government
promises before. And the fact that possibly some cement will be poured just
before the next election – well, I know that is just coincidence, not that I’m
either cynical or sarcastic.
Mr. Flemming refuses to promise surgery, obstetrics,
a full ER, and parking spaces at the new ‘facility’ which tells us far more
than any puffed-up dollar figure does. It’s clear that there will be none of
these things – except perhaps the parking spaces – so let’s not get carried
away. Oops! Another bad analogy. Carried away from a hospital, get it?
Not one to complain without suggesting a solution,
here is mine to the government: Use the unflooded second floor of the old part
of the present hospital because there’s no reason not to. Raise and widen the
walking trail that goes by the hospital so that vehicles can use it to
transport staff and patients during an actual flood to Beech Glen Road and over
what we call Jawbone Mountain (hardly a mountain). From there people can go
through Lower Kintore and Muniac, onto Highway 105 and downriver to the Trans
Canada and Waterville hospital if necessary, or to Plaster Rock.
Muniac Road, impassable during the March flood,
needs to be raised about ten feet near Highway 105 and perhaps a few other
minor places. Presto! Chango! For about two million dollars rather than $17
million. What government is forgetting is that, if a new hospital is built
across the river, then people on the Perth side can’t get to it. Robbing Peter
to pay Paul.
And finally, two major suggestions: Tear down
Waterville hospital or make it into 47 handball courts, and rebuild in
Woodstock, and lastly, have a major study done on the operation of Beechwood
Dam – NOT by anyone associated with NB Power or their tame consultants.
-END-
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