In a tacit acknowledgement that Community Services bolloxed the crisis it brought on at Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre, the province has stripped the department of responsibility for all five addiction recovery centres in Nova Scotia. From now on, provincial funding, service agreements, and oversight will fall under the Department of Health and Wellness. [caption id="attachment_11009" align="alignleft" width="200"] Peterson-Rafuse[/caption] The decision comes just in time for Health to assume responsibility for evaluating a proposal from Talbot House to restore provincial funding it received as Cape Breton's only addiction recovery centre. That avoids the sticky problem of having Community Services officials, with...

19 October, 2012

Mary Cecilia "Bomber" LeBlanc, shown above with L'Arche assistant Mavis at the 2007 Cape Breton Island Film Series party for l'Arche Cape Breton, died peacefully Thursday morning in her home at The Vineyard, a L'Arche residence in Orangedale, surrounded by friends and caregivers. Death came six days before her 60th birthday, and, incredibly, hours before a provincial health bureaucrats were to meet to begin planning her involuntary removal from l'Arche, over protests of family, friends, and caregivers. Mary was a small woman with a steely will and an outsized capacity for getting her own way—and then leading a chorus of laughter about...

07 November, 2010