HEADS AND HEARTS
I can tell you from first-hand accounts of trying to help more than one friend through mental health crises—the health system here has no idea what to do if you go into the emergency room in crisis ("Remembering Alex," Reality Bites by Michaela Cavanagh, April 4). We had to leave and call an ambulance. Only once the person hurt themselves did they get any sort of treatment. After we had to call the ambulance a third time, the paramedic literally tried to slap sense into this person. We had to fight for three days to get them into the hospital. It's scary that people don't know what to do in the event of mental crisis, but even scarier that this includes our medical system. —posted by Everett Stone at thecoast.ca
We too lost a dear son, Andrew John Abbott, to suicide in July 2011 due to the cumulative effects of his bipolar disorder—and a marked lack of mental health help. He was 23 at the time, and we have never been the same since. —posted by John Abbott
Unfortunately we have a long way to go to get people the mental health help that they may need, even if they're diagnosed.In the past 16 months I have lost both of my teenaged sons to suicide, without even being aware that they obviously had a mental illness.
These were my only children and I just wish that I could have had the proper skills to have known that something was drastically wrong mentally with them. I never saw it coming. —posted by Bob Macdonald
MONEYMAKING
I share Patrick Burgomaster's outrage over the Dexter NDP government giving our tax dollars to Irving ("Irvings ire," Letters, March 21), however, the numbers he cited in his letter are incorrect. It is worse—the numbers are much higher.
Irving Shipbuilding Ltd. won a $25 billion, not $3.5 billion, bid from the federal government to build armed combat vessels at the Halifax Shipyard. Then Irving got a $304 million dollar loan of which $260 million, not $244 million, is forgivable from the provincial government. Plus there will be at least $14 billion spent for in-service support over the next 20 years. All of this money is hard-earned Canadian tax dollars that are being spent to build new warships.
Through this (war)shipbuilding contract, both the federal and provincial governments are enriching the wealthy Irving family and the American weapons giant Lockheed Martin and ignoring the urgent environmental and social needs of Canadians. —Tamara Lorincz, Halifax
REMEMBERING KLEIN
Ralph Klein croaked, you know. I, myself, am a tad confused right now. The "liberal" media is saying that Ralph was a patriotic Canadian, and a hero of "the people."
Shit, man, that wasn't my Ralph Klein, at all. My Ralph Klein tossed a 20 at that guy, who was just trying to sleep on the floor of that homeless shelter...on, like, Christmas Eve.
Yet my Ralph Klein would never've been caught dead—so to speak—tossing a 20, natural-resources-wise—so to speak—at the feds. EVER!
Then, soon after my Ralph Klein caught the first limo out of Alberta's Province House, his replacements—like homeless shelter guys, as it were—had no choice but to crawl—so to speak—to those very feds, and, beg to be abused by a shitload of 20s being tossed at them.
But, in the end, the quintessence of my Ralph Klein was, and, will always be, to me, this skanky, termite-like, boring, slimy whatever, that built its nest at the structural core of our "Canada Health Act" and started to eat at it until the whole thing was ready to give way.
Then, like the slimy, undulating whatever it was, my Ralph Klein laid some eggs and sort of oozily slithered off, to that place where parasites finally go—just before, as I said, the whole thing came down.
Que sera, sera. —Kirby Judge, Halifax
