Ontario

Chalk River workers want to run nuclear facility

amp Leave a comment

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

As the fate of Canada’s nuclear industry hangs in the limbo of unreleased government-commissioned reports, workers at the Chalk River reactor are taking matters into their own hands.

Fearing a looming, but still vague, restructuring of the Crown corporation that operates the reactor, they’ve submitted their own proposal to Ottawa – an ambitious plan that would see Chalk River independent of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s reactor business and become a nuclear research giant in its own right.

“The silence” from Natural Resources Canada, says Gordon Tapp, president of Chalk River Technicians and Technologists, “is deafening.”

Continue reading →

Ontario cracking down on prescription pill abuse

amp Leave a comment

Friday, November 20, 2009 – Globe and Mail

ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

In the face of Canada’s growing pill problem, Ontario is moving to change the way opioids are prescribed and monitored.

New regulations to be put in place in the coming months would crack down on prescription abuse and set new benchmarks for how these pills should be doled out in an attempt to deal with the growing numbers of people getting hooked on painkillers across the country.

Addiction experts say the changes are badly needed and should have come a decade ago.

Continue reading →

Canada, you need an intervention

amp Leave a comment

Saturday, November 14, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

Janey Nagle wasn’t looking for kicks when she began courting a drug habit. The Percocets her doctor prescribed were the only thing that could take away the excruciating pain that lingered a decade after a car accident threw her into a windshield with such force that her face left an imprint in the glass.

For the first two years, the painkillers did the trick. The Perth, Ont., mother of four was able to work and look after her family. But after a while she couldn’t get through the day without the pills’ euphoric effect, and that demanded higher and higher doses.

Fearful her doctor would cut her off, Ms. Nagle looked elsewhere. She spent hundreds of dollars a day on prescription drugs bought off the street, primarily from friends and acquaintances. She photocopied her prescriptions and filled each one repeatedly at pharmacies around Perth, Kingston and Smiths Falls.

“It was a horrible, panicked feeling every morning when I woke up,” says Ms. Nagle, now 43. She remembers the daily dilemma: “How am I going to get them? Where am I going to get the money?”

Continue reading →

‘Vandal’ from outer space

amp Leave a comment

Saturday, October 17, 2009 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY

GRIMSBY, ONT. — The oldest thing Tony Garchinski, his mother, Yvonne or anyone else on the planet has ever touched fell with such force it cracked the windshield on the family’s Nissan SUV, skidded across the hood and dented their garage door before landing on the ground, breaking into five fragments.

Ms. Garchinski did the only logical thing: She called the police, assuming the odd-looking bit of rock was tossed at the car by a local vandal.

The cops couldn’t do much. They collected information and filed a report, and wondered out loud why the supposed pranksters had bothered to smash in the front windshield, but not the rear.

But 30-year-old Mr. Garchinski, who came across the damage when he went out for a Saturday-morning smoke three weeks ago today, held on to the strange item.

Continue reading →

Horror and relief after storm

amp Leave a comment

Saturday, August 22, 2009 – Globe and Mail
Anna Mehler Paperny

DURHAM, ONT. — For 30 minutes, in the twisted metal wreckage of a flimsy shelter, Rick Coveyduck tried to revive the prostrate 11-year-old-boy.

“It was so devastating, trying to bring that boy back to life,” Mr. Coveyduck, 57, told The Globe and Mail yesterday of his attempts, along with those of the boy’s mother, to perform CPR. “It was horrific. Devastating. Unexplainable.”

The young camper, identified last night by residents as Owen MacPherson, was the only direct casualty of a tornado that snaked a devastating path through Durham, Ont., tossing birds, people and cars like snow-globe confetti and leaving roofs ripped asunder, walls shredded and trees uprooted. It was one of an estimated four tornadoes to touch down across Southwestern Ontario on Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes and buildings and leaving tens of thousands of people without power.

Continue reading →