Shucking Oysters: Still Life With Restless Thoughts

April 30, 2026

Shucking Oysters: Still Life With Restless Thoughts

By Alex Allen

It’s been barely over a year in Lord Rump’s second term; and with all due respect, we’re fucked. This ugly psychopathic maniac has got a grudge against the world and nothing will stop him from his deranged cruelty – not even Melania. What am I scared of? I don’t know and that’s the point. The unknown, because as we have all seen, especially in the last year, there have been some pretty nasty curve balls tossed our way.

Experts are always reminding us that perspective is everything. Take what you are afraid of and break it apart. Look at it from a new angle, and it loses it power over you. Call I be cynical? Really? Mark Twain said it best, that we don’t know “whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

There are so many disparities. The world is all about us and them. The wild and the tamed. E car drivers and gas car drivers. Homeowners and the homeless. Half full and half empty (the correct answer is 8 ounces in a 16 ounce glass). We all know who the wealthiest are and it does not bode well.

The tech companies are destroying something precious which is the possibility of contemplation. They have created a world where we are constantly watched and always distracted. Their most precious asset is our most precious asset, our attention and they have kidnapped it. Franklin Foer wrote that the lineage of tech companies, like Facebook and Google goes back to communes. In his words, “that experiment ended in shambles – the communities dissolved into cults of personality, small villages riven by rivalries.” All the hippy visions of democracy and oneness culminated in authoritarianism and crushing disappointment.

We homo sapiens have lost our way. The obscene wealth of some individuals is not just inhumane, it is inhuman. As someone said, a watch tells the time; a $200,000 Rolex tells people you’ve got issues. As most of us know, many traits characteristic of psychopaths are celebrated in business: ruthlessness, a convenient absence of social conscience, and a single-minded focus on success. It’s not that people without a soul become rich, it’s that being rich tends to corrode whatever soul you have got left.

And speaking of us and them. We seem to be still trapped in this distorted view of human nature and the natural world, two faces of an enemy to be feared and conquered, rather than an ally to be honoured and nourished. This is the deepest species-level psychopathology imaginable. How did we go from flowing with the natural world to living in a zoo of our own making?

We contaminate streams, rivers, lakes, aquifers with industrial waste, pesticide runoff, and fracking chemicals, and then we are sold “pure spring water” (often just tap water) in plastic bottles that breakdown into microplastics that find their way to oceans, whales’ stomachs, and our own bloodstreams.

Paul Huebener bluntly wrote in Nature’s Broken Clocks, “from the sudden acceleration of the warming of the seas, to shocking storms and unprecedented fires, to the distress cries of birds that no longer know when to migrate, the environment can no longer be seen as a stable backdrop to human affairs.”And ironically, the few events that still seem to happen with predictable regularity is that every few years a group of scientists warns that we have only a few years left to take action.

Many say that we are living in the anthropocene era; that human nature is the cause of climate crisis. Far from it. We are living in the “capitalocene.” The real issue is the “voracious ecological appetite and wilful irresponsibility of capitalism.” Capitalism not only alienates and commodifies nature into products and transforms humans into consumers, it also alienates and commodifies us. The economy does not create value for the real world: it destroys the real world. Is industrial civilization the thing that has to be saved? Or is it the destruction that has to be stopped? Think long and hard.

And green technology. As Derrick Jensen wrote, a perverse shade of green. Electric cars (along with solar panels and windmills) also contain electronics, circuit boards, and other computer components. Only one company in the world recycles lithium ion-batteries. Why? Because the process makes no economic sense. It’s complex, hazardous and expensive. Substituting a “greener” alternative isn’t always the solution. For example, almost all recycled paper is made using non-recycled pulp, often from heavily logged and degraded forests.

Our so called “forest management” has destroyed 98% of this continent’s old growth forest. Scientific forest management has been and continues to be about maximizing profit and killing forests. We are not born indifferent to our surroundings. If we were more widely taught that forests create rain, drive winds, manage water, seed the oceans, provide the foundations of much modern medicine, cleanse the air of man made pollution and disinfect the atmosphere, it would be much harder to cut them down.

We need to learn how to think like a forest. The elders have long shared this knowledge. Can we not just let the forest manage itself; let the animals manage themselves? In the meantime, the bliss of listening to the sound of the winds rustling the trees. This enigmatic sound – psithurism represents one of the many mystifying sounds of nature. Jasmine Dawda noted with unbridled lust: “If the human mind was to take a leisurely stroll among trees, it would metamorphose into being a towering, resilient force like the noble giants and their fronds, fluttering under the wild sky as the stars regale their ancient tales of flowers spouting towards the light and the rivers rippling at night, with the mysteries of the universe hidden in the sounds!” Did you get goosebumps?

And finally, I leave you with the words of Rainer Maria Rilke: “If we surrendered to the earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

A cathedral of light formed from Tesla’s lighthouse

April 30, 2026

Gabriel Jeroschewitz, March 18th, 2026,

A cathedral of light formed from Tesla’s lighthouse.

The maid would find him at ten past ten. But Tesla’s departure from Room 3327 began over an hour earlier. In his bed at the New Yorker Hotel, eighty-six-year-old Nikola Tesla lay face down on a narrow mattress. His wool blanket reached his chin, and the man whose inventions sparked the age of electricity slipped beyond the breath of the Hudson River outside his window. On his nightstand were cracker crumbs, several pages of hastily written notes on death rays and cosmic particles, and a small mound of coins: two dimes, a nickel, and three pennies—thirty-three cents. For all the world gave him, it cost him everything and gave back almost nothing.

Yet, he was far from alone within his bedroom.

The first to arrive at his hotel room was a spirit marked by the fluttering of wings. A white dove alighted upon the windowsill where Nikola Tesla, despite his years, could still recognize the presence of the love of his life—the only love that he ever knew. For years past, the bird had departed this world beside him. Yet the spirit of the dove arrived at his hotel room that fateful night.

“Mr. Tesla?” the dove asked, its head not moving from its owner’s window. “It is time for you to leave this room and step outside.”

Tesla started, and his eyes, still bright and clear despite the burdens of time and age, began to flutter open. Despite speaking with pigeons from the window each evening for decades, Nikola Tesla did not feel he had the strength of an energetic man like those who surrounded him within the city. His chest ached with the knowledge that the scientists of his own body had named “coronary thrombosis” for the condition he endured each day.

“Strength?” Tesla rasped. “I do not feel it in me, Ma’am.”

A second voice answered from the hallway. “Strength is not required, my Niko. Only courage is needed, and you have always possessed that within yourself.”

The woman who spoke was his mother, Djuka. She stood in the hallway, radiant, with outstretched hands—the same that reached for him after he fell in the river as a boy. Sadness filled the air as she approached, for she had died years before Tesla invented alternating current.

A third figure entered his bed’s doorway. Mark Twain, who had spent years within Tesla’s laboratory each summer while in America, stood before the sleeping inventor. “Well, Nick?” the man inquired with a twinkle in his eye. “Would you like to go on an adventure?”

Another pang of pain washed over Nikola Tesla’s chest. Yet he forced a smile for the aging writer of adventures for young children. “I am dying,” Tesla replied.

“Transitioning,” Djuka replied with a soft smile. “You always had a talent for electricity, Niko.”

Dove, Mark Twain, and Djuka took Tesla’s hand and led him beyond the doorway and into the wall. Beyond his bed, Tesla had created the world’s power grid. Now the three ghosts would show him the world he had shaped.

They travelled on Tesla’s polyphase alternating current at 60 hertz, moving through the walls of the New Yorker Hotel and then Manhattan—faster than light.

Their first stop was Niagara Falls in 1895. It appeared not as it had been over the years, but as it was in the present day. The power station Tesla constructed provided the city with electricity, which he used in his inventions.

“Nick,” Mark Twain said with concern upon the location of the power station. “You gave the world the thunder.”

“I know,” Tesla replied with a smile. “And they gave me thirty-three cents.”

Suddenly, a ghost of the other inventor of the electric age appeared before Tesla. Thomas Edison, Tesla’s enemy and rival in the invention of electric power, stood before him in his younger years with a dying battery in his hand. The two men locked eyes for the first time in the lifetime of either man. Edison released a breath, and his ghostly form faded from existence. He had finally lost his battle to Nikola Tesla.

They moved on. Before Tesla rose the Wardenclyffe Tower, intended for global wireless power. Though his efforts failed and the structure became a ruin, Tesla and his companions moved through it as it should have worked.

“I wanted to give all of humanity a miracle,” Tesla choked out, his tears blurring the world. “No meters. No wires. Just radiant light—shining equally for every soul.”

“Why, Nick?” a new voice asked. For standing before the inventor was a woman from the future, twenty-three years hence. She stood with a device in her hand that emitted a soft blue light—a smartphone that connected to the wireless world Tesla had described in his 1893 lecture.

“When they touch the glass?” she asked Tesla. “They touch your dream. All of the satellites in the sky, all of the radio signals, all of the vital signs measured of patients in hospitals across the world—you built the Wardenclyffe Tower, Mr. Tesla. We, the present and future of humanity, have entered the building to take our places within the pews.”

More locations followed for Tesla and the others. Though Nikola spent his last decade entertaining the birds that passed by his window each night—only they remembered to return to his hotel and his life—the rest of humanity had not.

Yet, they came, they returned, and they saw Nikola’s accomplishments:

The Tesla coils at music festivals allowed children to experience the passing of electricity through their bodies.

MRI machines in hospitals measure the body’s electrical currents.

The electric cars that bore his name and moved silently along the highways lit by his inventions.

Young engineers in Belgrade, Buffalo, and even Beijing who spoke of Tesla by his name changed science textbooks and erected statues of the man responsible for the power of the modern age.

“They thought me dead,” Djuka said, holding her son’s face within her hands. “Yet I have known since his passing in January of 1943 that Nikola Tesla had not failed. For though the world may be slow in its acquisition of your inventions, Niko, it remains a capacitor that stores your charge until you are required again.”

They brought him to the Wardenclyffe Tower again—not the stone structure that would hold his funeral in five days, but a cathedral of light formed from lighthouses, headlights, and electronic screens that illuminated the night.

Around the luminous structure stood thousands from around the world—not mourners, but beneficiaries of his brilliance. Gathered in the future’s light, their hands extended as if to receive the current Tesla provided across time.

Tesla wept—full, silent tears. For the first time since crossing the threshold into death, he felt a warmth flowing into him: the long-denied power of love returning fiercely to his life and to his lonely, yearning heart.

The white dove cooed at his neck. “Your love,” it seemed to murmur to the dying scientist, “It was never wasted.”

Returning him to his bed, the three ghosts filled Room 3327 with those who had witnessed Tesla’s inventions. They surrounded him as he slept, determined he would not leave the world alone.

Reclining on his bed, the pain vanished. In its place was a warmth as powerful as the sun shimmering on the Adriatic Sea, where Tesla once created the induction motor that changed the world.

“Thirty-three cents,” Mark Twain chuckled. “The age of Christ when he changed the world with his science. Fitting, I suppose.”

“Thirty-three,” Djuka murmured. “The degrees of the electrical phase of Tesla’s invention.”

The coins on the nightstand in the bedroom glowed. The light was not of monetary value but of voltage. Tesla arrived in the world with four cents and a book of poetry—stories about the power of the unknown. Yet, he would leave with thirty-three cents and a world electrically lit.

Outside in the sky, the traces of dawn appeared upon the skyline of Manhattan. The maid knocked on the hotel door three times with the brass key that opened the door. Within the bed, the man had finally passed into sleep. Those who entered the hotel said he was peaceful in his sleep, with his eyes closed.

Yet, his right hand remained in an open position upon the blanket beneath him.

The white dove had departed from the windowsill, but a single feather lay upon the radiator that warmed the sleeping body of Nikola Tesla.

The tragedy of Nikola Tesla was never his dying alone. It was that the living failed to see love’s presence all around him: the love still pulsing in his inventions, and the bright vow that his future would carry those gifts beyond death.

For now, the adventure that Nikola Tesla took with his three companions was finished. Yet the light that he provided to the world remained.

Within the walls of Manhattan, the alternating current continued on its path—60 cycles per second—as the man of electricity had dedicated his life to creating a world that would forever remember his name.

Police Brutality on the Barricades of Resistance to Resource Extraction

April 30, 2026

1732:Cylon image — Chief Howilhkat, Freda Huson, stands in ceremony while police arrive to enforce Coastal GasLinks injunction at Unistoten Healing Centre near Houston, B.C. on Monday, February 10, 2020. Amber Bracken

Police Brutality on the Barricades of Resistance to Resource Extraction

By Cylon2036. We/Us

British Columbia’s specialized RCMP unit, now known as the Critical Response Unit–BC (CRU-BC), cannot be understood in isolation. It represents the institutionalization of police strategies aimed at suppressing dissent, and a renewed political and economic push to accelerate resource extraction projects. Together, these forces have intensified longstanding violations of Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and environmental governance in the province.

The CRU-BC reflects a shift in how the state anticipates and responds to resistance. Originally formed in 2017 as the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), the unit was designed to manage anticipated protests linked to pipeline expansion and other extractive projects. Over time it has evolved from a temporary task force into a permanent, specialized policing body with a broader mandate. Internal documents show that the unit is now embedded in provincial committees that coordinate intelligence, surveillance, and enforcement responses to opposition against major infrastructure and resource projects

.

This institutional embedding suggests that policing is no longer merely reactive and responding to protests as they occur, but are proactive and integrated into governance structures that anticipate dissent. The CRU-BC participates in governing bodies such as the Critical Incident Secretariat and Civil Disobedience/Public Order committees, which facilitate information sharing between government, law enforcement, and industry actors. The opposition to resource development is treated not simply as a political or legal disagreement, but as a matter of “public order” requiring coordinated surveillance and suppression.

The unit has faced hundreds of complaints alleging excessive force, unlawful tactics, and racism, particularly in its policing of Indigenous-led resistance to projects like pipelines and old-growth logging. A 2025 court ruling found that officers violated Charter rights during a raid on Wet’suwet’en territory, reinforcing concerns that the unit operates without accountability. Expanding its role, especially before oversight investigations are complete, signals an Orwellian prioritization of enforcement over rights protection.

The Federal and Provincial governments, amplified by corporate pressure, have intensified efforts to accelerate extraction in a “corporate resource rush” of the timber, mineral, and fossil fuel industries. The false promises of economic growth and export revenue (corporate profits and environmental degradation) have allowed governments to reduce regulatory barriers and expedite project timelines. Yet this acceleration collides with the legal and moral requirement to respect Indigenous rights, including the duty to consult and, increasingly, the principle of free, prior, and informed consent.

The resulting resistance is being sharpened by the speed and scale of current policy changes. Fast-tracking inherently compresses consultation timelines and limits opportunities for meaningful engagement. When Indigenous nations assert jurisdiction over their territories or oppose projects, their actions are framed as obstacles to economic progress rather than as exercises of constitutional rights. In this context, the deployment of a specialized policing unit to manage opposition is less like law enforcement and more like the enforcement arm of a corporate development agenda.

The RCMP has long been implicated in the enforcement of colonial policies, from the imposition of the reserve system and The Indian Act, to the suppression of Indigenous resistance. Contemporary conflicts, such as the Wet’suwet’en pipeline standoff and the Fairy Creek logging blockade, echo these dynamics. At Fairy Creek, for instance, over 1,000 arrests were made during protests against old-growth logging, amid widespread police violence and targeting of Indigenous land defenders. There is plenty of evidence that policing in resource conflicts is not neutral but structurally aligned with state and corporate interests.

The integration of CRU-BC into intelligence-sharing frameworks deepens this concern. Reports indicate that the unit monitors opposition to projects, shares information with industry actors, and engages in community outreach aimed at mitigating potential disruptions. While officials describe this as coordination and preparedness, in reality it is the surveillance and pre-emptive criminalization of dissent, particularly dissent rooted in Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protection.

The backlash against Indigenous rights is not solely a product of state policy, as it is also shaped by corporate media discourse and narratives. The framing of Indigenous consultation as a “barrier” to development, or of land defenders as threats to economic stability, contributes to a climate in which rights are seen as negotiable in the face of corporate market imperatives. This narrative is amplified during periods of economic uncertainty, when governments emphasize rapid project approval as a solution to external pressures.

This is not just about a single RCMP unit or a set of provincial laws, it is about the alignment of state power with extractive corporate priorities in a context where Indigenous sovereignty remains unreconciled. The CRU-BC is a focal point because it embodies this authoritarian alignment in a specialized, institutionalized mechanism for managing the conflicts between rapid development approvals and rights-based resistance.

Our Rulers Take So Very Much And Give Us So Very Little

April 30, 2026

Our Rulers Take So Very Much And Give Us So Very Little

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

APR 29, 2026

Reading by Tim Foley:

Sure plutocrats are killing our biosphere, but hey, at least they’re creating technology that lets you avoid the cognitive discomfort of writing your own words and thinking your own thoughts.

Sure the empire is butchering human beings at horrifying scale around the world, but on the bright side it’s creating refugees who will move to your country and bring you treats that you can order from an app on your phone.

Sure imperialist extraction is robbing the resources and exploiting the workers of the global south at extortionate fees, but on the other hand you get to wear a new outfit every day because the clothes you ordered online are dirt cheap thanks to transcontinental slave labor.

Sure our rulers are rapidly caging us in a digital surveillance network of ever-increasing intrusiveness and control, but golly gosh they just keep gifting us all these nifty free social media platforms that we simply cannot stop ourselves from scrolling through for some reason.

Sure capitalism is driving us toward collapse on multiple fronts while everyone gets sicker, poorer, dumber, crazier, and more miserable, but hey look, McDonald’s is bringing back the McRib.

Sure it’s only a matter of time until we find ourselves policed by armed robots and facial recognition murder drones and praying the government AI doesn’t shut off our digital money because our eyes lingered a bit too long on an anti-Israel meme, but at least we can have fun placing Polymarket bets on the next country the United States is going to bomb.

They take so very, very much, and we trade it away for so very, very little.

They steal our wealth, strangle our ecosystem and incinerate our future, and in return they give us bread and circuses that are just affordable enough to stop us from chopping off heads.

They exhaust us, abuse us, indoctrinate us, distract us, desensitize us, confuse us, overload us, misinform us and gaslight us, and in exchange we get a hundred overpriced streaming services to choose from and a thousand types of toothpaste.

They’re making our world worse and worse, and they’re making us worse as individuals, too. They’re poisoning our minds and darkening our hearts. Killing our conscience and amputating our empathy. It sucks to live in the shadow of the empire. There’s nothing natural or healthy about this dystopia.

And they’re getting it practically for free. A little propaganda, a sprinkling of mindless entertainment and a few treats, and we give them a whole planet to rape. They’re getting all the most vital parts of our world and all the most sacred parts of ourselves for a song.

We can’t keep letting them do this to us. We’ve got to wake up. Sometimes saying this feels as futile as imploring a loved one to leave their cult or break up with their abusive partner for the ten thousandth time. But that is what needs to happen.

And people do leave cults. People do exit abusive relationships. It only happens when they’re ready, and it’s got to come from them — but it does happen.

Here’s hoping we find some way to leave our abusive relationship with the empire before it’s too late.

__________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Feature image via Adobe Stock.

The Centre of it All

April 30, 2026

[facebook.com/markprior.images]

Mosses

April 30, 2026

#1732

April 30, 2026

ADIMS 21st Annual Beach Cleanup

April 23, 2026

Laughter is Medicine comedy workshop and show is back!

April 23, 2026

Laughter is Medicine comedy workshop and show is back!

Have you ever imagined yourself doing standup comedy?

Are you interested in learning more about comedy and humorous storytelling as a way of exploring settler-Indigenous relationships?

Are you scared but secretly thrilled at the prospect of being on stage telling jokes to a friendly Denman crowd?

Join us!

This summer, Denman will welcome back Cherokee scholar and comedian Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel for a comedy workshop in May and show at the Community Hall on Saturday, June 6th.

Jeff will lead a group of us in a 4–part workshop to explore how Indigenous and non-indigenous folks express humour, to learn comedic storytelling and craft a 3-minute standup routine with the help of fellow workshop attendees and mentors. Everyone is welcome to sign up, especially youth and elders!

The newly minted comedians will then join a group of guest performers on stage at the Front Hall in a community comedy showcase on Saturday, June 6th.

The online workshop series will take place on Mondays from 6-8:30 p.m. May 11, 18, 25 and June 1. There will be a final workshop on Friday or Saturday before the show to finalize our routines. The cost is $150 for adults and $60 for youth, with no one turned away due to lack of funds.

By day, Jeff Corntassel is a member of the Cherokee Nation and the Professor of Indigenous Studies at UVic, where his research and teaching focus on “Everyday Acts of Resurgence” and the intersections between Indigenous internationalism, community resurgence, climate change, gender, and community well-being.

By night, you can find him doing stand-up at venues around Victoria, including Phillips Comedy Night at the Mint. He also produces stand-up comedy fundraisers for Indigenous communities on the frontlines, such as Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Maunakea, Hawaii, Standing Rock and others. Jeff regularly runs Laughter is Medicine stand-up comedy workshops with Mark Robertson, producer of Ratfish Comedy, for aspiring Indigenous and BIPOC comedians.

This fun and transformative workshop experience is open to Denman Island residents over 14 who are interested in developing stand up comedy skills through the lens of resurgence and reconciliation.

This event is being organized by Concerts Denman and supported by the Denman Island Reconciliation Group and the Denman Centre for Autonomous Living and Learning (D-Centre) @ the Snag (www.thesnag.org/dcentre ). To register for the workshop, contact Joan at jcdonaghey61@gmail.com

Shucking Oysters: Take a Number

April 23, 2026

Shucking Oysters: Take a Number

By Alex Allen

In Manitoba and Ontario over 20 hours. Quebec over 18 hours. And in BC 20 hours plus. If you think you have a medical emergency and that you will be treated in a timely manner, think again. These are average wait times at hospital ERs across Canada. Some walk in and walk out without even being seen. Too many rural ER departments in BC – Merritt, Fort Nelson, Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Mission, Delta, Salt Spring Island, to name a few– have temporarily closed or drastically reduced their hours. Is our healthcare system broken or is it yet another new normal?

“My grandmother arrived to our local hospital when she started vomiting up what looked like old coffee grinds, she waited for nearly four hours before being triaged, eventually moved into emergency where they sat her in an old vending machine alcove with a shower curtain and only checked on her when demanded. That is where she spent the last three days of her life.”

“The stories that you’re seeing coast-to-coast reflect that breaking point of the system that I think we’re unfortunately seeing manifest right now,” Dr. Michael Herman, an ER physician in Ottawa and vice chair of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians public affairs committee. “I’ve been doing this job coming up on 12 years now, and I think morale amongst the physicians is about as low as I’ve seen it. It’s a tough time right now, to be very frank.”

The problem is that when patients are admitted to a hospital through ER they end up staying there because hospital rooms are being taken up by patients who can’t leave due to lack of outpatient resources like long-term care or community support. As a result, Herman said, ERs are functioning “as the de facto boarding house for the hospital.”

Every emergency department strives to provide high-quality care, Herman said, but they often can’t due to system constraints. Canada had an average 2.5 hospital beds available per 1,000 people in 2023, well below the 4.2 average beds across other industrialized countries. By comparison, South Korea and Japan had 12 beds per 1,000 people.

Whether it’s trying to get an X-ray or accessing resources for Crohn’s disease, ERs are now the catch-all for every access issue in the healthcare system. “Emergency rooms become the conduit through which all these other issues flow.” None of this is new, Herman said, but now, the ongoing pressure on the system has reached a boiling point. Many people are using ERs as a walk-in clinic, as they don’t have a family doctor. Why not have walk-in clinics at hospitals?

Providing more primary care and long-term care services needs to be part of the solution, according to Herman, who also says Canada needs more doctors and more hospital beds, so staffing, training and infrastructure need to be priorities.

A healthcare ER worker in Ontario shared: “it’s a complete system breakdown from not enough family physicians, lack of walk-in clinics, limited specialists and not enough beds in acute and chronic care, the emergency departments takes the burden of everyone’s dissatisfaction. Implore your government officials to make changes starting with educating more doctors and creating more beds.”

Enigmatic BC Health Minister Josie Osborne has agreed that the situation is “unacceptable” and “alarming” for residents, pointing to the challenges of a global shortage of healthcare workers. In response, the province implemented an aggressive recruitment program, including fast-tracking US-trained physicians and nurses.

Island Health launched a website last summer giving estimated emergency room wait times for some island hospitals. In January, the government announced a Northern Health real-time emergency department wait website. Island Health, as opposed to Northern Health, doesn’t actually list wait times, but takes an average of that particular hour, that same day, over the past eight weeks. And then it updates that figure only once per day. The hospitals in Tofino, Alert Bay, Salt Spring Island, Port Hardy and Port McNeill simply say “open.”

It turns out Island Health chose a different option from Northern Health when they procured their healthcare software. Political correspondent Rob Shaw noted that BC health authorities purchasing incompatible IT systems has long been a problem. “All the different presidents and vice-presidents of the health authorities have justified their executive-level salaries by charging off to reinvent the technological wheel again and again.”

In a recent statement, Doctors of BC, which represents over 16,000 physicians, residents, and medical students, said they have been calling for the “creation of an emergency department stabilization plan” for way too long. “Physician shortages are also impacting emergency departments, and recent efforts to recruit US physicians and the new SFU medical school are certainly helpful, but more needs to be done to recruit and retain physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to meet the needs of patients.”

Some physicians are calling on the BC government to expand contracts with private clinics in delivering publicly funded services. Australia has contracted with private clinics since the early 90s with great success. Additionally, the BC government could reform the way it pays public hospitals. Most public hospitals are expected to operate within a yearly budget, regardless of the level of services they provide. In contrast, more successful healthcare countries pay hospitals for the services they provide. In other words, by making the amount and level of services a source of hospital revenue, “hospitals are incentivized to treat more patients.” Quebec is already moving in this direction.

In Alberta and Ontario, the governments seem to be intentionally underfunding their hospitals so that they can slowly privatize healthcare. What direction BC takes remains to be seen, but in the meantime, when it comes to going to an emergency department, plan ahead, bring a book along, like War and Peace, and remind yourself it could be worse – you could be sitting in your car waiting for a ferry for 24 hours.