Friday, March 12, 2010

Doctor Cooking Up Healthy Meal Next Month

An area physician will putting on a chef's hat next month to raise money for the Riverside Health Care's chemotherapy department.

Dr. Dimitrios Vergidis, who is the Oncologist for the Riverside Chemotherapy Program and Chief Oncologist for Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, will host and prepare a five-course meal highlighting the healthy eating of the Mediterranean.

"It will be an evening to learn about cancer prevention and healthy lifestyles”, said Teresa Hazel, Foundation Director.

The event takes place Friday, April 23 at the Memorial Sports Centre Auditorium and replaces the popular Old Bags Lunch.

Hazel says the Lunch will return again next year.

Tickets are fifty dollars each with a portion of the price qualifying for a charitable receipt and can be obtained by calling the Foundation office at 274-4803 or Shawn McCaig at 274-4817.

Snowmobiling Ends

Snowmobiling in Voyageurs National Park has come to an abrupt end.

Park official says conditions of the trails and the ice are rapidly deteriorating and snowmobile travel is no longer recommended.

The park's ice road was closed earlier this week.

Respite Program Available

Local health officials are trying to increase the awareness of a program that gives family members or other caregivers who care for individuals still living at home, a break from those responsibilities.

Rainycrest Home Administrator Edith Bodnar says the short stay respite program provides for those seniors or adults to continue receiving their care by staying at Rainycrest for short periods of time.

"Clients can stay a few days," says Bodnar, "such as a weekend, a week or up to 60 days at a time. There is a maximum of ninety days in one year."

Bodnar says they have two private rooms set aside for the program and are staffed 24 hours a day.

Tax Collectors Deal

More than 12-hundred Ontario tax collectors will get a severance package worth -- up to 45-thousand dollars each -- despite the fact they won't be losing their jobs.

As part of the move to harmonize sales taxes with Ottawa the provincial collectors will become federal employees.

Progressive Conservative critic Ted Arnott says the move really amounts to a hefty severance package to change job titles.

Arnott says they'll work in the same office, not miss a day of work, and are paid up to 45-thousand dollars to change their business cards.

On-Line Town Hall


A town hall meeting on the harmonized sales tax will be held in cyberspace today.

Kenora-Rainy River Howard Hampton and Thunder Bay Rainy River MP John Rafferty are hosting the event and will be taking viewers questions about the new combined tax.

"We are going to do an on-line web presentation that people can tune in to," says Hampton. "I simply want people to understand how big of a tax increase and how wide of a tax increase this is."

The webcast is at http://www.johnrafferty.ndp.ca/ or http://www.nwlive.ca/ beginning at 4 p.m.

Dams Back Up for Sale?


There's is renewed concern over the potential future of AbitibiBowater's hydro-electric dams in northern Ontario.

Kenora-Rainy River MPP Howard Hampton says the company is again looking to sell the assets which would hurt the mills that use them for power.

"You end up paying a lot more for electricity," says Hampton. "That means the costs of producing paper accelerate and increase and your much more vulnerable of being shut down or the paper mill being closed."

Hampton is calling on the province to prevent any sale from moving ahead.