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Your Weekly Clover Valley Newspaper June 13, 2013 ❖ www.CloverdaleReporter.com ❖ 604-575-2405 Treeland Realty
Looking for change By Jennifer Lang Five years after the death of her father, Cloverdale’s Rita McDonnell is still demanding better protection for B.C.’s seniors. Rita’s father, Gary Davis, a retired postal worker, was 68 when he passed away in 2009 after developing bedsores and hospital infections in a long-term care facility in Langley. He’d initially been hospitalized for an aneurism in his groin, and his medical condition was too complex to bring him home. He spent time at Royal Columbian and Langley Memorial hospitals, where he developed bedsores, something McDonnell says wasn’t brought to the family’s attention until the situation was serious. “I was naive at the time, thinking bedsores were tiny, but they weren’t,” McDonnell says, referring to a photo showing a photo of a gaping hole about the size of a tennis ball in her father’s back. “I wanted to know why he smelled so bad,” she says. She had no idea what was happening, and so began asking questions.
He was later transferred to a long-term care facility in Langley, but he still didn’t heal. As another Father’s Day arrives without him, there were other disturbing incidents that still haunt the family. One day, McDonnell says she was visiting the facility with her children and they could hear screams coming from her father’s room. The nurse left, and after they went in, her father pulled her close and said, “Rita, make sure you know who that nurse is. He’s too rough with me.” She says her father was also neglected and starved. But complaints seemed to fall on deaf ears. Before his death, her father eventually lost both legs due to complications from the bedsores. “The only thing he ever wanted was justice for what happened to him, but you cannot get justice. If you get put in a home, you have no legal rights. Your rights are taken away,” says McDonnell, whose family’s story is featured in a new documentary that premiered this spring called Hope is Not A Plan.
JENNIFER LANG PHOTO
Rita McDonnell, right, pictured with her daughter Sara, says she’s still haunted by what her father endured before his death.
Directed by Colin Andrew Ford, Hope is Not A Plan looks at the consequences for Canadians with disabilities through the eyes of Paul Caune, director of Civil Rights Now, a non-profit organization of people with disabilities. The film, which is now available for streaming at UrbanSherpaFilms.com, points out that 56
per cent of Canadians over the age of 75 are disabled, suggesting it’s an issue that many Canadians will inevitably grapple with. The film argues people with disabilities who are in care do not have a practical way to enforce civil rights guaranteed to them under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when things go
wrong, making them vulnerable to abuse and neglect. The film looks at several cases across Canada, including Rita’s story, uncovering some disturbing facts along the way. For instance: according to the B.C. Ombudsperson, quoted in 2012, “The MinisSee TALK / Page 2
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stint last August, he found a note from his wife Amber. As well as all the usual “good lucks”, she wrote that she’d had a dream that she’d be on the finale, too, with their now 19-month-old son Gavin. And there they were, walking onto the stage to congratulate Matt as the Food Network’s cameras caught their every joy-filled emotion seconds after the announcement was made. Watching all this unfold at a packed viewing party at the Coal Harbour Cactus Club Café were the Stowes, including his vast, extended family, Richard Jaffray, the owner of Cactus Club Cafe, where Stowe
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works on developing new menus, friends, wellwishers and dozens of media. One of the very few people in the restaurant who knew the outcome was Stowe himself. But as he kept loosening his shirt collar under the stare of every person and camera in the room, you’d think he was just as anxious to discover the outcome. “That was an extremely hard secret to keep,” he told the crowd. Stowe’s final five-course menu was a trip down memory lane. It was all about milestones in his life — real ones, not just ones he thought would impress the judges. For
See ‘LIFE CHANGING’ / Page 6
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The Stowe family was out in force to cheer on Matt Stowe at the viewing party. From left, cousin Laura, sister Leah, sister-in-law Kristina and cousin Hayly.
By Martha Perkins A mother knows. A few days after her 15-year-old son Matt started his high cooking course at Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School, Brenda Stowe knew her son’s other career goals — including being a sports reporter — were on the chopping block. “He was won over by the kitchen in Cloverdale,” she said Monday night after watching Matt crowned as Top Chef Canada on the Season 3 finale. Turns out wives also know their husband’s destiny. When Stowe unpacked his bags to begin his eight-week filming
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