Feature Article - January 5, 2006

Home | Local Weather | Editorial Policy

Feature Article

January 5, 2006

. | Navigate | .

ArchiveImage GalleryAlgonquin Land Claims

Gray MerriamLegaleseGeneral information and opinion on legal topics by Rural Legal ServicesNature Reflectionsby Jean GriffinNight Skiesby Leo EnrightTastes oftheOttawa Valley Courtesy of the Fall RiverPub & Grill, Maberly

New Womens Support Group in Verona

The North Rural Women’s Program of Land O’ Lakes Community Services, the Women’s Counselling Program of K3C Community Counselling and the Family Services Program of Rural VISIONS Centre are pooling their resources to offer a support group for women in and around the Verona area.

Women and Relationships: Building Healthy Connections in our Lives is a support group for women who are experiencing or have experienced abuse (verbal, emotional, financial, sexual or physical). The women will explore, through discussion groups, a variety of topics including (but not limited to), how abuse in relationships affects us, self-care and beginning to build healthy relationships with ourselves and others.

Co-facilitators for the group are Corinne Burke, a counsellor with the North Rural Women’s Program and Manijeh Moghisi, a counsellor with K3C Community Counselling Centres.

Meetings will be on Tuesday mornings from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Verona Free Methodist Church. The program will run for 6 weeks beginning on January 17, 2006. There is no cost to attend and childcare and transportation can be provided. To register, or for more information please contact Corinne Burke at (613) 279-3151, extension 110 on Mondays or Tuesdays.

Feature Article - February 16, 2006

Feature Article

February 16, 2006

Verona CommunityAssociation business lunch

by Jeff Green

Fifteen members of the Verona and area business community gathered last Thursday for the first ever Verona Businesspeople’s Luncheon at Mom’s Restaurant in the heart of the village.

The Verona Community Association (VCA) organised the event. The VCA is well known for organising events such as the Verona Festival and the annual Christmas tree lighting. It had its origins as a business association. After a few years, however, it became clear the business owners did not have enough time to take very active roles in organising community events, and the Community Association was established.

VCA President Marcel Quenneville has been working to enhance the warm relationship between the association and the business community. He started his remarks at the lunch by presenting the results of a business survey the VCA conducted last summer.

Seventy-four percent of businesses surveyed said that the residents of Verona and the surrounding areas were their main customers, and 67% agreed that their business increased greatly in the summer months. Ninety-four percent of those surveyed said they have a good working relationship with other local business owners, and 80% said their business has improved over the past few years.

Perhaps the most interesting responses were to a question about what comes to mind when business owners think about what Verona needs most. The most highly recognized need was for a pharmacy, followed by a motel or more bed & breakfasts. As to what could help satisfy the needs of the community, attracting new businesses and developing parking were the most commonly identified items.

Marcel Quenneville introduced Tom Revell, owner of Verona Computer and Satellite and the webmaster for the VCA website. Tom Revell demonstrated how the site is set up and talked about improvements that are underway, including the development of an up to date categorised business directory, complete with links to member business sites and/or email addresses. Listings on the site are free to any business that has been involved in any VCA activity through financial or in-kind support.

Terry Shea, the General Manager of the Land o’ Lakes Tourist Association (LOLTA), also addressed the gathering. He discussed the role of the tourist association in member communities. The new focus of LOLTA, encapsulated in the new “Let’s Go” slogan, and their 2006 “experience planner” and vacation map, is on single day excursions for visitors to the region.

Terry Shea pointed out two important points for Verona area businesses. The first is that 2/3 of the visitors to the Land o’ Lakes region come to visit with family and friends who reside in the region on a permanent or seasonal basis. By making their services known to the local community, businesses will be accessing tourists as well. The second point is that LOLTA is now working with the Kingston Economic Development Corporation to encourage tourists who are staying in Kingston to come out to the surrounding region for day excursions.

“ Kingston , which has the ability to accommodate large numbers of tourists, is having difficulty keeping those people in the area for several days. The average tourist spends less than two nights in Kingston . If we can encourage people to spend and extra day in Kingston by spending a day in the Land o’ Lakes, it would be good for everyone,” Terry Shea said.

As the meeting wound down, and the people in attendance got ready to go back to work, there was broad agreement that the lunch had been successful. Although all of the people attending the meeting knew about the other businesses in the community, many of them had never met the people running those businesses.

Dianna Bratina, the Manager for Economic Development with the County of Frontenac , attended the meeting, as did Ann Pritchard, the Chief Executive Officer of the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation.

There have been similar kinds of efforts made recently, in Central Frontenac and Addington Highlands , to bring business people together in order to build a stronger business community. Those initiatives were both undertaken by the local townships, through economic development committees. The Verona business lunch had no township involvement, and there were no South Frontenac councillors in attendance.

Feature Article - June 29, 2006

Back toHome

Feature Article - June 29, 2006

Rural families surveyed

Even though they live in the country, rural families have identified programs focusing on the out-of-doors as their #1 request for new services.

The five elementary schools in South Frontenac Township were recently surveyed by the Staff at Rural VISIONS Centre to determine programming needs for each unique community. Lance Gibson, Chairperson of its Board of Directors, stated “we recognize that each community should receive the services it identifies as being needed rather than the most convenient to provide. A cookie-cutter approach has never been our way of serving our community.”

The survey was developed and distributed as a result of the adoption of the Annual Plan for 2006-07. Each year Central Frontenac Community Services Corporation, also known as Rural VISIONS Centre, develops objectives to address organizational, youth and family, long term care, and community needs throughout the Greater South Frontenac Area. Children’s programming was one of three objectives for youth and family services.

CFCSC will now begin approaching potential partners, with Scouts Canada being the first contact. “There are groups running in Perth Road, Verona and Sydenham currently and the price and time frame fit what parents were requesting: maybe its just a matter of families being educated about what scouting has to offer and the fact that it has been open to boys and girls for years” said CFCSC Executive Director Beth Freeland.

The other top-five requested programs were “How-To Series”, “Music and Movement”, “Pre-teen Self-Esteem”, and Weekly Recreation activities.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - June 8, 2006

Back toHome

Feature Article - June 8, 2006

Women's counseling program in Verona

The Women’s Counseling Program of K3C has been offering counseling to women in unhealthy or abusive relationships for over 20 years in the Kingston area. Eight years ago, the service became available one day a week in Sydenham. Now, with additionalfunds from the Ontario government, counseling is being offered in Verona two days per month. Women over the age of 16 from any part of the county may call for an appointment to be seen in Kingston , Sydenham or Verona .

The topics of violence and abusive partner relationships are ones that are difficult to talk about, sometimes due to denial, sometimes because of a sense of helplessness or embarrassment. A teen-aged or adult woman who is harassed, bullied or threatened, either verbally or physically, is often isolated by a sense of guilt or fear.She may feel caught in an uncontrollable situation.Being able to talk privately to an understanding person who is completely outside the situation is often the first step toward gaining a sense of perspective and self-confidence.

When a mother is abused, her children are affected.Even infants are stressed by violence in the home.Older children may feel the abuse is their fault, or feel guilty that they can’t protect their mother.Children know that their own welfare is strongly tied to their mother’s health and well-being.It benefits all family members when the violence is addressed.

The Women’s Counseling Program is part of K3C Community Counseling Centres and is funded by the Ministry of Community and Social Services.The counseling is free and confidential.To make an appointment, women can call the main office number at 613-549-7850 and ask for the Intake Worker or, for Manijeh at extension 3215.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - August 17, 2006

Back toHome

Feature Article - August 17, 2006

Handsome Molly at the Verona Festival

The sun shone on the Verona Festival once again this year, as the annual celebration of community continued to develop. Music has always been a large part of the festival, although it is a many-faceted event. Maintaining its focus on local music, while at the same time bringing in regional talent, the festival booked Handsome Molly to kick off its Saturday afternon Bluegrass

and Gospel program.

Performing straight ahead bluegrass, from Bill Monroe to Flatt and Scruggs and beyond, Handsome Molly kept up a blistering pace, with band members taking turns delivering the vocal lines in that high lonesome style that makes bluegrass music unique among modern forms.

Handsome Molly is Gilles Leclerc on Mandolin, Peter Deachman on guitar, Peter Gioulet on Banjo (all residing in Ottawa) and Bill Lansdell from Verona on the stand-up bass. Bluegrass without the fiddle is like supper without dessert, and Handsome Molly was joined on this occasion by Shawn Kellet from Harrowsmith, who added an extra sweetness to the sound.

Handsome Molly was followed on stage by Verona’s favourite local Gospel outfit, Crimson River, who kept the crowd entertained throughout the afternoon.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - August 10, 2006

Back toHome

Feature Article - August 10, 2006

Verona Festival building on ten years of success

by Jeff Green

Last year’s 10th anniversary of the Verona Festival was a high water mark for the annual celebration of community life, featuring record-setting attendance and giving organizers and participants a feeling that the festival had really come into its own.

This year’s festival will introduce some new events and different performers, at the same time keeping up the traditions it has been built upon.

One new event is a pet show, which will take place between 11am and 1pm on Saturday. It will be hosted by Furry Friends, Verona ’s own pet store. The show will be an opportunity for pet lovers to show off their animals. There are three categories of competition in the show: the cutest pet, the best dressed pet (for those who bring their animal in costume), and the best pet trick. There is a #2 entry fee to the show, and there will be prizes for all. Although it is new, the pet show harkens back to the early years of the festival, when a pet parade took place. Dogs and cats, even the occasional chickens paraded around the festival grounds in costume during several of the early Verona Festivals. The pet parade was replaced after a couple of years with a full-fledged parade which marks the start of the festival on Friday evening at 7:00 pm. On Friday, night, popular children’s performers Shari and Jerry will entertain, followed by one of the most accomplished country bands around, Red Rose Express with Sawn McCullough.

Saturday is always a busy day at the Festival. It all starts with a pancake breakfast between 7:30 and 9:00, and after that there a numerous events starting up, including antique car displays, a craft show, and flea market, and for the first time there will be a mini putt course set up. The Red Green boat races will take place at 1:00 pm, but entrants will start building their cardboard and duct tape boats at 11:30 am.

Concurrent with the festival, the Frontenac Farmers’ Market will be held, as usual, between 8:00 and 12:00 at the Lions’ Hall grounds on Verona Sand Road .

At 1:30 in the afternoon, performances will begin on the main stage. Performers will include pianist Lisa Carue, Handsome Molly (bluegrass), Stone Mills Idol, Crooked Wood (folk).

The United Church will present a fish fry starting at 5:00 pm, and at 7 pm the evening performances begin with Rock n’ Roll bands the Brink and Bauder Road playing.

Many of the hands-on activites will return on Sunday, along with the annual ecumenical church service and the Soap Box derby.

In the afternoon, Lisa Carue starts off the program, followed by gospel bands The Old Hims and Crimson River . The final performance of the weekend will be a good one, as the popular Celtic band Shores of Newfoundland will take the stage.

The Festival will wind down at about 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, when prize draws will be held, including the winner of the bike giveaway.

There are many more events and activities planned for this year’s festival. For information, pick up a brochure or check www.veronacommunity.on.ca.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - November 16, 2006

Back toHome

Feature Article - November 16, 2006

Students going bald for cancer

by JeffGreen

Madi Van Camp of Verona was minding her own business when she happened to hear her mother Nicki talking to Brenda York on the phone. Brenda lives in Toronto , but she and Nicki have been friends since they went to public school in Verona . They were talking about how Brenda is going to lose her hair as the result of cancer treatments she will be undergoing at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto .

This got Madi thinking.

Almost immediately, she came up with the idea of shaving her own head in solidarity. So, Madi and her own friend Celina Grey, Grade 5 students in Ms. LeDuc’s class at Prince Charles’ school, are collecting donations to the Princess Margaret hospital, and when they reach their goal of $500, their heads will be shorn. They hope this will happen before Christmas.

To help make Madi and Celina bald-headed, go to Verona Hardware to pick up a pledge sheet. Donations of $15 or more will be eligible for a tax receipt from Princess Margaret.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - March 15, 2007

Back toHome

Feature Article - March 15, 2007

Verona's doctor search, Part 3byInie Platenius

“It just doesn’t seem right somehow.” That’s a comment often heard in conversations about finding money to entice doctors to practice in rural areas – especially a rural area with all that Verona has to offer. Shouldn’t doctors be delighted to settle here where we have comparatively low housing costs, excellent recreational possibilities, good schools and an easy commute to a major medical teaching university? After all, we’ve had excellent doctoring here for as long as we remember. Why can’t things just go on as before?

There are many reasons why a community needs to become more active in finding good medical care. First of all, the entire province is short of family doctors. The reasons for this are tied to government funding policies, decisions about medical school enrolments, licensing of immigrant practitioners and the preferences of medical students – all things beyond the scope of local communities to directly change. But we can work to change the things that graduating family doctors find difficult to deal with – and many of these involve money in one way or another.

Doctors now come out school with student loan debts of $100,000 or more. Their contemporaries in the business world begin with a much smaller debt load and often begin earning a much higher wage. It isn’t helpful for us to say, “Well if you wanted to get rich, then you should have gone into business.” First of all, that doesn’t get us more doctors, but more to the point: when people choose medicine as a career, they’re opting to help people. It isn’t their intent to run a business, yet that’s what they often end up doing. Hiring nurses, nurse practitioners, secretaries and adjunct staff; managing the maze of government regulations around payment; keeping records and maintaining a physical plant are all things for which business people get good bucks, and these things have nothing to do with what family doctors want to be doing – diagnosing and treating kids and grandpas and young moms and dads. In a city, some of the business stuff is more easily dealt with by combining resources with other practioners or even hiring people who specialize in these things. In a rural setting, this is more difficult.

A committed community can help new doctors with any one or more of these factors, and many communities are already doing just that. Over this past year, the Verona Community Association has been planning with Dr. Laurel Dempsey from the Verona Medical Clinic and Dr. Lynn Wilson ,the Administrator of the Rural Kingston Primary Care Network, for the eventuality of Dr. Dempsey’s retirement. They have also spoken to many resource staff and community groups who are involved in similar searches to ours, and have formed the Verona and District Health Services Committee, to inform our community about what we have now, what we should be planning for in the future and what our community responsibilities will be over the next five years to ensure that our clinic has enough doctors. On Wednesday March 28 from 7 – 8:30 at the Lions Hall the committee will host a community gathering to discuss these issues. Speakers will include Louise Day, RN who along with husband Doctor Gordon Day was enticed to come here about 40 years ago by the work of a farsighted group of community people. Also speaking are Dr. Laurel Dempsey, who is actively recruiting doctors for a time when she will retire, Dr. Lynn Wilson, director of the Rural Kingston Primary Care Network, and Diana Bratina, manager of economic development for Frontenac County, who has studied the demographics of age and health issues which affect medical care in our area. Come out to learn what we have now in our Verona Clinic, what we should have now and will need in the years to come, and what our responsibilities will be to provide it.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - March 8, 2007

Back toHome

Feature Article - March 8, 2007

Verona's doctor search - Where are we now?by Inie Platenius

In the next many months, a group of interested Verona community members will start to lay the groundwork for a serious initiative to attract new medical practitioners to the Verona area in preparation for the time when Doctors Dempsey and Townsend are retired (several years hence). This is the second of a series of articles about the things the community needs to consider in their quest for continued excellence of care.

If it weren’t for the spiffy sign and the large parking lot, you could easily mistake the Verona Medical Clinic for a 1960’s country bungalow. Even the back yard, fenced now for Cricket the golden retriever and Griete the Flemish barge dog (or schipperke), adds to the homey feel. But inside, the building is a bustling hub of medical care. In the main floor clinics, Dr. Laurel Dempsey and her team (RN Carolyn Goodberry and Dr. Constance Townsend, a locum who comes in for a couple of days a week), serve about 2400 patients. The bungalow’s second story, which was designed as a residential apartment (and where Doc Day and his family lived for 10 years early in his practice) is now a busy centre for support and counseling - featuring nutritional, psychiatric and social work consultants who offer support and education in everything from spousal abuse to chronic disease management.

That’s not all there is to doctoring in Verona. Our clinic is one of five rural practices (Newburgh, Sharbot Lake, Sydenham and Tamworth are the others) which make up the Rural Kingston Primary Health Care Network. This network serves about 12,000 people, and is one of only five in the province. Patients enrolled to doctors in this network have access to after hours telephone advice service, and holiday coverage; and because these clinics have enhanced computer record keeping, they can offer better coordination of care and medication. This scene is a long way from our idealized collective memory of the all-things-to-all people country doc who dispensed iodine and wisdom from his converted front parlour, but even so, today’s local bedridden and palliative care patients can still receive house calls, both at home and in extended care facilities. And like Dr. Day before her, Dr. Dempsey is a coroner.

Who are the patients? Besides those of us who arrive with the usual seasonal or stepped-on-a-nail complaints, our rural area has a higher than average proportion of seniors and chronic disease patients – particularly heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and arthritis. Our doctors see a lot of patients, particularly children, with poor nutrition. And, largely because of the numbers of seniors and diabetics, foot care is a big issue. We rural patients are spread throughout the countryside, so distance is a factor in treating us. This is one reason (though not the only one) that rural docs are reluctant to do obstetric care. But for all the challenges that our rural care presents, we have been very fortunate to have attracted dedicated doctors who are concerned about the continuity of primary care in our area. These are people who chose to come here, and who remained committed to finding replacements. After nearly 40 years of practice here and a sea of change in the way medical care is delivered, Dr. Day stayed on until he was certain that a committed physician was in place to carry on. In a few years, Dr. Dempsey herself will be retiring, so the search begins all over again to find someone who wants to practice in a rural area. In fact, we need to attract more than one doctor. Our current team is understaffed, and there are a considerable number of people with no family doctor who would receive care here if our clinic weren’t already full. We should be bringing at least two full time equivalent physicians, one nurse practitioner, and one more registered nurse to Verona.

Those of us who love living here find it hard to imagine why a young doctor wouldn’t jump at the chance to move to this quiet, safe, beautiful area. Next week we’ll look at some of the reasons – both real and perceived – that make many graduating students are reluctant to set up in rural areas, and outline some of the things we can do to change that. Then, on March 28 you can come to a public meeting sponsored by the Verona Community Association at the Lions Hall to explore in more detail the steps we can take to make sure that our history of good and dedicated local medical care continues for our children and our grandchildren.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed

Feature Article - March 1, 2007

Back toHome

Feature Article - March 1, 2007

Verona's doctor search

by Inie Platenius

In the next many months, a group of interested Verona community members will start to lay the groundwork for a serious initiative to attract new medical practitioners to the Verona area in preparation for the time when Doctors Dempsey and Townsend retire (several years hence). This is the first of a series of articles about the things the community needs to consider in their quest for continued excellence of care.When Floyd Deyo was about 14 years old, his cousin did a side cast off their fishing boat and Floyd caught a double hooked fishing plug in both his cheek and earlobe. He trudged up from the lake to Doc Goodfellow’s place (now Korner Kastle B & B) to get it looked after. “What, could you not find the lake?” was the doctor’s greeting. He then told Floyd to run across the street to Revell’s for a pair of side cutters, which the doctor then used to snip off the hook in his ear. But the cheek was another job altogether. After looking the situation over for a minute, the doctor whipped the hook out of Floyd’s cheek while simultaneously intoning, “Now this is going to hurt, didn’t it?”

That story says a lot about what medical care was like 50 or so years ago. First of all, there was no question but that Floyd would head straight to the local doctor. A trip to Kingston would have been out of the question. And there was probably no question in Doc Goodfellow’s mind that he was going to do whatever necessary to fix the situation. Government regulations and patient lawsuits were a world away. Like today, the doctor of a 100 years ago may well have been a respected, even revered member of the community, but he (and it was almost certainly a he) carried with him a different set of community expectations. He was more likely to have grown up in the area. At least one former local doctor grew up down the road, went to Queen’s and then came home to practice. He was expected to be on call day and night, but on the other hand, people were less likely to call him than they now are to go to an ER or all night clinic. We have come to expect that just about anything that goes wrong with us can be put right, and we resent waiting for that to happen. But even 60 years ago, going to Kingston for care was a rare enough event that today people still talk about the time when they put grandma on the train to town, where a horse and buggy transported her to hospital. People got their care here in their own community, and what they couldn’t get, they pretty much lived with or died from.Yesterday’s patients paid for their doctoring not much by our standards; a doctor’s standard of living was frequently no higher than any other educated community member and quite a bit less than many. But the cost of care came from patients’ own pockets (or henhouses and hog butcheries, as was sometimes the payment). One ledger from a local doc, now long gone to his heavenly reward, shows fees of 50 cents here and 75 cents there. And the ledger sometimes reads “no charge” probably because the doc knew the family circumstances. Today, we are so far from paying out of pocket for our general doctoring, that most of us forget that anyone ever did. A doctor used to set up practice from his home. Today, that’s nearly unheard of. Where would she put all the diagnostic equipment? She needs a separate room for the communications and record keeping alone! By 1960 it was clear that Verona could no longer wait for a young graduate to set up practice in the front parlour, so a group of far-sighted Veronites met the challenge of changing medical practice by forming “an altruistic society for the express purpose of attracting to …the Village of Verona , a qualified medical practitioner…” To that end, they contributed $14,000 to build a suitable residence “which residence was considered an essential by the association to attract a well-qualified medical practitioner to the community.” (As a comparison, 10 years later in 1969 a farm with outbuildings and 180 acres sold for $14,000 15,000.) That building became the Verona Medical Centre and it was that building and the support of the community behind it that in 1963 attracted Dr. Gord Day and his wife Louise. The group of 14 held the mortgage, managed the property, advertised for and found the young doctor who would commit to staying in Verona for ten years. The Verona Lions Club offered to pay their moving expenses and to donate a stretcher and several wheelchairs they had on hand. Today we face a similar challenge. Hundreds of communities across Ontario are under-served, but thanks to the foresight of those 14 people and of Gord and Louise Day, we are among the fortunate communities with consistent and caring practitioners. But for that situation to continue, another group must step forward to take up the cause. On March 28 at the Lions Hall there’ll be a meeting of the Verona & District Health Services Committee to explain the steps in the process. We should show up and find out what’s going on. We owe it to our children and to all those who cared enough in the past to provide for us.

Other Stories this Week View RSS feed