COMMUNITY LEADERS
Kappy Flanders, 81. Flanders became a tireless palliative-care advocate, after her husband, Eric, died of lung cancer in 1991. She was instrumental in establishing McGill University’s Chair in Palliative Medicine, the first in North America. The Montreal General Hospital credits her philanthropic efforts for helping “revolutionize lung cancer treatments and palliative care.”
Father John Walsh, 78.One of Montreal’s best-known Catholic priests, Walsh was a pastor in parishes in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and LaSalle, hosted a radio show on CJAD and was known for his ability to reach out to different religious communities. Such was his standing with other faith communities that Walsh was warmly remembered at an interfaith memorial service as well as at a Catholic funeral.
MONTREAL One of Montreal s hospital networks is so overloaded with COVID-19 patients that it has begun to transfer some adults to the Montreal Children s Hospital, CTV News has learned. Intensive care units at the McGill University Health Centre network are full to the point that the MUHC hospitals are trying to add more beds with creative solutions. At the Royal Victoria hospital, all 35 ICU beds are occupied, and several plans are being studied to find a way to squeeze in more. That presents quite a logistical challenge because of the resources needed to treat COVID-19 the average length of a hospital stay for a COVID-19 patient in Quebec is 17 days.
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Last May, two months into the pandemic, I mused that life was shamelessly imitating art. That is, if Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day could qualify as art.
In lieu of having the alarm clock waking us up daily to the strains of Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe, we were being jostled out of sleep with the latest COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitalizations and mortality numbers. This was followed by daily press briefings from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier François Legault and Dr. Horacio Arruda. Then we were inundated with updates on debates surrounding sending kids to school, the closing of businesses, the wearing of masks and the merits of physical distancing.
The Martha s Vineyard Times
Dr. Malcolm Dunkley, a well-known former physician on Martha’s Vineyard, died Dec. 12 in Sandwich. He was 91.
Eric Malcolm Dunkley was born in 1928 to Edward Dunkley and Jane (née Wilkinson) in Cardiff, Wales. He was the youngest of four siblings and an exceptional student, ranking second nationally in higher school certificate leaving exams. After post war national service with the Royal Air Force and then medical school at Cardiff University, he married Margaret Markall. The two had met while working on a mobile X-ray unit scanning the lungs of coal miners while traveling throughout the valleys of South Wales.
MONTREAL A group of Montreal nurses got a hard dose of news Thursday followed by an almost immediate turnaround, as their health authority announced it would back away from plans to cancel their Christmas vacations. In a memo sent Thursday and obtained by CTV News, nurses, technicians, managers and other staff who work for the West Island health region were told that than any time off over the holidays will be cancelled, right up until Jan. 30. With cases mounting and hospital capacity pushed to the brink by the second wave of COVID-19, the staff were told their vacations wouldn t be possible.