The ghost of the Mike Harris government is resting a bit more quietly in Ontario municipal circles.

The province "will not force amalgamation of municipalities," Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark said at a public forum just after the federal election took place.

The province has been conducting a review of 82 upper and lower tier municipalities, most of them located in the vicinity of the City of Toronto, sparking speculation that the review would lead to amalgamation.

As the Ford government demonstrated in the first few weeks of its mandate when it changed the ward system in the City of Toronto in the midst of a municipal election, provincial authorities have broad powers over municipalities in Ontario through the Municipal Act.

Last spring, when the details about proposed changed in the health sector were released, the government began a process whereby Public Health agencies, Paramedic Service delivery agencies, and front line health care agencies are being combined into large regional entities, the idea being that service delivery will be more efficient and less expensive for provincial taxpayers.

All of this led to speculation that small and rural municipalities, of which there are 405 in the province, will find themselves facing amalgamation pressures within the next year or two.

The announcement by Minister Clark put an end to speculation.

“I never took that talk too seriously,” said Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith, who is preparing to take on the mantle of Frontenac County Warden in 2020. “It’s easy to say that amalgamation is the answer but when they take a detailed look at the cost of maintaining services and keeping up roads like 38 and 509 that the province downloaded to the municipalities in the first place, they see that there are no real savings to be had.”

Within days of Clark’s comments, a new municipal funding program, the municipal modernization program, aimed at those 405 small, rural municipalities, was announced.

The first intake for the program is providing grants for “reviews of municipal service delivery expenditures by independent third-party operators.”

Frontenac County and its member townships decided last week that they would like to apply for the funding.

At their meetings this week, South Frontenac and Frontenac County Council are both considering making a combined submission to the fund. If the submission is successful, they will undertake a service delivery review focused on taking a regional approach in reviewing operational services to identify efficiencies and best use of limited resources.

At this point, all that is necessary is that an expression of interest form be submitted to the province. The details can be worked out between the 5 municipalities (North, Central, and South Frontenac, Frontenac Islands, and Frontenac County) before a final submission is submitted next month.

The review would take place early in 2020 and a report will be submitted to the ministry and released to the public in late June. Later intakes under the Municipal Modernization Program, which runs until 2023, will provided funding for implementation of identified projects

Frontenac County will also be submitting an expression of interest to the program to conduct a review of the economic development department with view towards making the best use of the limited resources in the small department.

Dear Frontenac News and readers,

Please allow me to respond to the July 24th editorial “One take on the shortage of primary care physicians” by Dr. Emma Cronk. Being a rural family physician myself, I applaud Dr. Cronk’s achievements, concern for her community, and desire to serve the health care needs of her rural community. I am concerned, however, that her years south of the border have led to a careless disregard for facts and a tendency to blame foreigners for our complicated domestic issues.

Dr. Cronk’s letter might lead people to believe that students from Saudi Arabia and other countries are taking up spots in medical schools and/or family medicine programs that would otherwise go to Canadians, but the data simply do not support that. I consulted the publicly available 2018 Canadian Medical Education Statistics produced by The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada to gather information on how many international students are attending Canadian medical schools at the undergraduate level and the post-graduate residency program or fellowship level. The document is 161 pages long, but I’ll share a few interesting facts I discovered.

First, let me address the undergraduate (= medical school) situation. Of the 2,872 new medical students throughout Canada in 2018, only 9 of those students (=0.3%) were not Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Three of those students came from the USA, and six came from elsewhere. Those spots were not “held” for foreign students … they competed for them. Of the 13,635 Canadian students (citizens and permanent residents) who applied for spots in a Canadian medical school in 2018, 19% were admitted. Only 3.4% of the 294 foreign students who applied for spots in Canadian medical schools were admitted. Of all the foreign students currently attending a medical school in Canada as an undergraduate (i.e. as a medical student) there is only one single student from Saudi Arabia here on a student visa. The country most represented in terms of foreign students attending Canadian medical schools on student visas is actually France, with a total of nine students.

Second, let me address the issue of foreign students and international medical graduates (IMGs) at the post-graduate or residency level. It is certainly true that some residency programs reserve spots for IMGs. Among the 1,466 trainees who began a family medicine residency program in 2017, 238 (16.2%) had earned their medical degree outside Canada, just as Dr. Cronk did. It is important to note that 49% of all post-graduate trainees in residency programs or fellowships are actually Canadian citizens or permanent residents who earned their medical degree outside of Canada, and are now returning to complete their training and hopefully practice in Canada. Looking at family medicine programs in particular, only 18 of the 3,514 family medicine trainees (0.5%) in 2018 were not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.

The IMGs I trained with in the Queen’s University Family Medicine program were all Canadians, or married to a Canadian, and all planning to practice in Canada. Moreover, acceptance into the family medicine residency program as an IMG is conditional upon signing a “Return of Service” commitment, in which the IMG resident promises to practice in an Ontario for at least five years after completion of their training. They do not take their training and run back to some other country to practice.

Yes, in 2017 there were 1,561 doctors from other countries who came to Canada on student visas for post-graduate training, but they come here to train in specialties such as thoracic surgery (62.5% of trainees), neonatology (56.3%), pediatric general surgery (50%), cardiac surgery (48.6%), and critical care / ICU (45.2%) – not family medicine (0.5%). Yes, in some cases the medical schools receive money from other countries to fund the specialty training of international students. These international funds help to subsidize the cost of training for Canadian students. How is that a bad thing? I think it’s great!

Looking at the actual numbers of international students in medical schools and these various residency training programs, I fail to see how this practice of training international students contributes to the shortage of family doctors in rural areas. I could go on for another few pages about numerous other factors that do contribute to the shortage of family doctors in rural areas, but I will not. I just hope that I have to some extent dispelled the notion that international students are to blame.

To Dr. Cronk, I share your frustrations about our shortage of rural family doctors, and I appreciate how much it pains you that you are not able to step in and fill that need for your community. It is indeed a tragedy that Dr. Cronk is currently unable to live and serve in our area. Perhaps Dr. Cronk’s experience could inform future policy to prioritize excellent candidates who have their heart set on rural family practice.

Sincerely,

Sabra Gibbens MD, CCFP

Family Physician in Verona

(Editors note: The following was forwarded by Emma Cronk’s mother, Leslie, who lives on the Cronk farm near Parham. It was written in response to media reports about a dearth of primary care physicians in the Town of Perth, but it applies as much to her home communities in Frontenac County. She attended the former Hinchinbrook Public School and Sydenham High School, where she began her basketball career as a Golden Eagle)

Dear Perth Residents,

I am sorry.

My name is Emma Cronk, and I was raised on my parents 2,000-acre ranch in Parham, Ontario and I am currently a family medicine resident physician in Atlanta, Georgia at Emory University.

I tried for two application cycles for medical school in Canada, and even applying broadly in addition to Ontario medical schools, from the East Coast of Memorial University to West Coast of University of British Columbia. After two years filled with rejection letters, I decided to apply internationally at Ross University School of Medicine in the Caribbean. I had come to realize that a lot of Canadian students were following this same path.

I was a NCAA D1 collegiate athlete in undergrad, where I played on a full basketball scholarship while simultaneously completing my BSc in Biology. I also was part of the Center for Performance training camps, where the top athletes in Canada would come together to train on weekends throughout the year in Toronto. Furthermore, I played for Team Ontario and competed at the Canada Summer Games in Regina, Saskatchewan, the second largest sporting event in the world, besides the Olympics. Our team even brought home a gold medal, and we were awarded at Parliament for our efforts and our accomplishments.

Even after my travels with basketball, my end goal was to be a rural primary care physician near my hometown, as I wanted to give back to my community. I understand the hardships that come from living an hour away from the nearest city and the importance of establishing care with a rural physician that has not only provided care to you, but to your entire family. I understand the struggle with transportation to get to appointments, to potentially reschedule, to have options for home visits, and let me tell you: I so desperately wanted to be that doctor for you.

After learning about how seats are saved for international students at our medical schools in Ontario, I was livid. I represented not only our province, but our country on an athletic level. I had competitive grades, I had numerous hours of volunteer work at KGH in the ICU, I balanced a heavy basketball commitment at fifty hours a week in addition to completing a demanding science degree, I have strong leadership capabilities along with time management skills, and was raised on family values with a farm work ethic. I was wanting to graduate and work in rural primary care, where doctors are needed the most. Instead, we take international students, who pay triple the price and who graduate and then go back to their home country. Furthermore, we have saved physician visa jobs for Saudi Arabians, who after they finish their training in Canada, leave to go back home, taking potential spots for Canadian students, and this still leaves us with physician shortages and it is not fixing the underlying problem.

Canadians NEED doctors, and especially in primary care. So here I am, a small-town country girl who struggled to get a loan to attend medical school internationally, while Canada receives payment from international students to study medicine in my own country. Something is wrong here. Something needs to change. In order to facilitate this change, I would encourage every Canadian to petition their MP in regards to this problem.

I am sorry that our healthcare system failed you, Perth. I am sorry that 2,300 residents are now without a primary care physician. I wanted to be that physician. I wanted to be your doctor. I wanted to practice rural medicine. I am a damn good physician and unfortunately, Canada is losing quality doctors every single year to the United States.

I hope that this piece helps open up the much-needed conversation that change needs to happen. I hope that if only one person reading this feels the frustration that I feel, then that change will eventually come. And if anyone sees my mother at the local grocery store or in town, give her a hug, as I know she misses her daughter in Parham.

Written by Emma Cronk, MD
Emory University School of Medicine Family Medicine Resident
Her parents and sisters still reside in Parham, Ontario

If 2018 Frontenac County budget were a head of hair, and county council a barber, no one would notice the haircut that was administered last week.

The draft budget set the requisition to the Frontenac Townships at $9.775 million and after a snip of $12,400 dollars the final budget trims that figure to $9.763 million.

Either way the number rounds off to $9.8 million. In percentage terms the requisition increase now sits at 4.4%, down from 4.5%.

Each of the four townships will combine their share of county costs with the amount that they are charged by the Ministry of Education. The County levy in 2017 was $9.35 million.

When they met last week, (November 5) some members of Council had greater ambitions for cuts, but only two cuts were made. The first was the elimination of a $6,000 commitment to an education bursary for foster kids to Family and Children’s Services of Frontenac Lennox and Addington (FACSFLA). The second was to curtail a planned parking lot restoration project at the county office/Fairmount Home by $20,000. Of that $20,000 in savings, only $6,400 came from Frontenac County ratepayers, the rest was to come from the City of Kingston.

The gallery at the meeting was crowded, and the observers were on hand for one reason, to see if the proposed $55,106 annual commitment to the University Hospital Foundation of Kingston would remain in the budget.

In a previous meeting, the proposed commitment, which is set to run for ten years, was supported by 6 of the 8 council members, but the Frontenac News took an editorial position opposing it, and North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins used social media to solidify opposition in North Frontenac.

When the matter was raised again at the meeting last week, council members who had expressed lukewarm support or did not speak at all the first time around came out strongly in favour. Councillor Nossal from Frontenac Islands said that for her constituents the hospitals are an essential service and a cause they support.

“This might seem like comparing apples and oranges,” she said, “but on Howe Island we get no benefit from the K&P Trail but our money went towards its construction. Now we are looking for the other townships to come through for the hospital foundation.”

Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle and Central Frontenac Mayor Francis Smith both said they thought the commitment was important. Even South Frontenac Mayor Ron Vandewal, who opposed the payment in the first instance, had a change of heart.

“I am not going to support the increase in this budget, let me make that clear,” he said, “but in canvassing my council last night and the community as well, not many people in South Frontenac seem to have a problem giving this money to the hospital foundation, so I will not vote against this item. We need to find savings elsewhere.”

With that, when Ron Higgins moved an amendment to cut the $55,064 from the budget, there was no one to second his motion.

After the hospital foundation supporters left, Ron Vandewal proposed the bursary cut, saying “is anyone here from Children’s Aid as he did so.”

Other cuts that Vandewal floated included trimming a $35,000 expenditure on Economic Development, which did not proceed anywhere.

Vandewal also want council to consider not following through with a 24 hour ambulance to Wolfe Island, which was a decision made two years ago but is still causing a budget increase in 2018 because it has been phased in.

Chief of Paramedic Services Paul Charbonneau was asked if an alternate service model, the use of an Emergency First Response vehicle, staffed by one paramedic, could provide the same level of service on Wolfe Islands a full 24 hour ambulance. Charbonneau said that with contemporary knowledge about emergency calls and medical technology, the First Response Vehicle could provide a high level of service even if it meant transport would have to wait until an ambulance arrived from Kingston via ferry.

Dennis Doyle argued that to shift away from the 24 hour ambulance just as it was about to come about would have negative impact on Wolfe Islanders.

“I am asking Council to provide this service to Wolfe Islanders,” he said. “It is important and if it is abandoned it will bring down property values and that won’t help anyone in Frontenac County.

That was the end of the debate.

The motion to approve the budget and prepare an enacting bylaw for approval on December 20 passed without further changes.

(Note – The final budget estimates for overall expenditures in 2018 are set at $41.3 million, which is unchanged from the draft version. The budget cuts approved last week fall within the rounding error)

At the Denbigh meeting of Addington Highlands Council on Monday night, Reeve Henry Hogg and Deputy Reeve Helen Yanch reported that Lennox and Addington County appears set to re-visit its commitment to maintaining a 12 hour a day ambulance service based in Denbigh and build a new base to house that service.

“The new CAO of the County [Brenda Orchard] has some ideas about replacing the ambulance with an emergency first response vehicle. That vehicle would not be able to cross county lines like an ambulance so there are implications for our neighbours, and there are big implications for our own residents as well because those vehicles can’t take patients to hospital,” said Reeve Hogg.

“Mark [Chief of Paramedic Services Mark Shjerning] has looked at it and does think it is viable, but I know that it is being pushed for sure,” said Yanch. “My thoughts are that the CAO of the county should sit down with our ambulance committee and talk to them.”
“When is this going to come up?” asked Councillor Bill Cox.
“November, I think,” said Hogg.
“Maybe Tony [Councillor Tony Fritsch] should approach the CAO, as chair of our ambulance committee, and ask if there is anything formal coming up about this, because we haven’t heard anything about it,” said Cox.

Reeve Hogg said “They are wearing us down with this. It comes up at least once a term, and it never seems to end.”
Hogg’s assertion. In 2012 the service was cut in half, from a 24 to a 12 hour service. In January 2016 a staff report at L&A County proposed cutting the service entirely. This was not acted upon by Council and in November, 2016 a search was initiated for a suitable piece of land to build a permanent base in Denbigh, but that base has not been built as of yet.

“They said at our county meeting last week that the new base was ‘not a priority for the former CAO’ [Larry Keech] which confirmed what I always thought was going on,” said Yanch.
“I’m sure County Council is tired of hearing from us and from Denbigh residents over and over about this,” said Fritsch.
“They are wearing us down,” said Hogg.
“Doesn’t the south already have what they want,” asked Bill Cox, referring to a new base that was built in 2016 in Loyalist Township.
“They are buying land right now in Stone Mills for a base,” said Hogg.

Currently there are two 24 hour ambulances based in Napanee, and 24 hour ambulances based in Odessa (Loyalist Township) and Northbrook (Addington Highlands) in addition to a 12 hour service based in a temporary station in Denbigh.
Those who have advocated for closing the Denbigh base talk about the lack of calls for service in the remote rural area, tying up personnel and equipment.

Those who advocate for keeping the service talk about distance and the role the Denbigh service plays in serving a large under-served area in neighbouring jurisdictions (Renfrew and Frontenac Counties) as well as Lennox and Addington.
The Denbigh service was initially set up by the Province of Ontario because of the communities location at the junction of two provincially significant arterial roads (Hwy.’s 41 and 28) in order to serve the vast, underpopulated region. Ever since ambulance service was downloaded and the Denbigh service has come under the budget of Lennox and Addington County, questions about its financial viability have been raised. Overtures to Frontenac and Renfrew Counties’ to help fund the service, beyond paying a fee for service for cross-border calls, have been rebuffed.

Other items from AH Council

Waste Disposal fees
A revised waste disposal fee schedule was presented to Council. It includes a fee of $15 for a truck or single axle trailer load, $30 for a dual axle load, and fees of $35 for a trailer/truck load of shingles, $100 for fiberglass boats, etc. Clear AH logo bags are required for all waste not covered in the schedule, and tires, e-waste and freon-free appliances can be disposed of for free. Large loads of construction waste, anything larger than a dual axle trailer, are no longer accepted at Addington Highlands Waste sites.
The new schedule will be presented to waste site attendants for comment, and will be back before Council for adoption, likely at the October 2 meeting at 1pm in Flinton.
Fees waived for NAEC
In response to a request from North Addington Education Centre staff, fees for use of the Flinton Hall for Christmas and Spring formals, and for use of the ball diamond rink for tournaments and other uses, will no longer be charged to the student council.
Ontario Community Infrastructure Fund Top up Component application.
AH has applied for a $877,500 to cover 90% of the costs to rehabilitate 2.8 kilometres of the Mattawatchan Road, which runs north from Buckshot Lake Road into Renfrew County. If approved the township will be required to find the other $97,500 in the $975,000 project.
Addressing concerns at Weslmkoon Lake – After an ambulance had great difficulty finding an island resident on Weslmkoon Lake, CAO Christine Reed said the township needs to look at re-doing the insufficient and inaccurate civic addressing system on the lake. The project will be slow and expensive as the lake has over 100 islands and 50 of them contain cottages, but Reed said it is something that the township needs to get started on, and council agreed.
Dog Strangling vine not accepted at waste sites
On the recommendation of Public Works Supervisor Brett Reavie, the township will not accept the invasive plant “Dog Strangling Vine” at waste sites. Residents are encourage to deal with the plant themselves.

Ten years ago Frontenac County Council committed $540,000 over ten years to help fund the re-development project at Kingston General Hospital and the Cancer Care Centre of Eastern Ontario. In the spring, the fund raisers from the University Kingston Hospitals Kingston foundation came back to Frontenac County with an update about the kinds of upgrades that are being planned for the hospital over the next few years, and said they would be back with a formal funding request.

They came back this week, and the ask is $200,000, which is what the presenters back in the spring predicted it would be. On a per-capita basis, if Frontenac County Council agrees to the request, its residents will be paying, on the basis of number of hospital visits per resident per year, the same as the City of Kingston pays. Looking at it another way, with 40,000 visits per year, Frontenac County would be kicking in $5 per resident visit as an annual donation.

While this seems like a large increase for the foundation to ask for, the request is actually lower than it was in 2007, when they asked for $220,000 per year of the council of that day. Council decided to pay just under 1/4 of the amount requested, $54,000 per year.
Council is expected to consider the request when they consider their 2018 budget later in the fall.

10 years ago Frontenac County made a commitment of $540,000 over ten years towards the re-development project at Kingston General Hospital and the Ontario Cancer Centre. Since then, a lot has changed in the operation of hospitals in Kingston.  Last week, Denise Cumming, Chief Executive Officer of the University Hospitals Foundation of Kingston, led a delegation to the monthly meeting of Frontenac County Council. The Foundation is the fundraising arm for the amalgamated Kingston hospitals.

Cumming talked about all of the improvements that came from Phase 1 of the redevelopment campaign, and then moved on to talk about Phase 2, which is getting underway. This phase, which is a $65 million campaign for which $52.5 million has been raised to date, will bring new operating rooms, new labs and a new emergency department, neonatal birthing suites and a new neonatal intensive care unit to Kingston General Hospital. At Hotel Dieu, it will be used to update the operating suites, the consolidated cardiology and the ophthalmology departments. Also planned is a redesign of the endoscopy centre, the children's outpatient centre and the diagnostic imaging suite. The pharmacy is also slated to be relocated. At Providence Care, fund raised dollars will be used for a number of equipment upgrades.

Cummings said “I am here to provide you with information about the success we have had in the  past thanks to the support of municipalities such as Frontenac County, and to talk about our current and future projects.”
But the pending request for a new commitment was on her mind as well, and that of members of council as well.

Cumming pointed out that 539 staff members at the Kingston Hospitals live in Frontenac County, there were almost 42,000 visits to Kingston hospitals in 2015, the most recent year for which such statistics are available, and that represents a 94.6% increase since 2006, the year when the last funding commitment from Frontenac County was made.

“You are going to be looking for more money from us, I expect” said Warden Ron Vandewal

Cumming said she would, but not until the fall. She said the request we will be for about $200,000 per year.

The City of Kingston has made a commitment of $1.3 million per year to the foundation.

Cumming said that the foundation is going to base its request to Frontenac County, which will be forthcoming in the early fall, on a formula that uses that $1.3 million commitment as a base. Since the ratio of visits to the hospitals from Frontenac County residents as compared to the amount of visits from residents of the City of Kingston is a ratio of about 1 to 6.5. The $200,000 requests therefore comes from dividing $1.3 million by about 6.5

Cumming then said, when interviewed after the meeting, that she is of course aware that  $200,000 per year request is much higher than the $54,000 that has been paid by county residents through property taxes for the last ten years, but added “we asked for $220,000 the last time, and the county council of the day decided on $54,000. The amount they donate is going to be up to them, but we thought the comparison with what Kingston City Council has committed is something to go on.”

Frontenac County will be entering into budget deliberations in October for the 2018 budget, at which time a request for funding support from the University Hospitals Foundation will certainly be on the table.

“Today’s question is, ‘where will we put the fax machine?’ says Dr Jeanette Dietrich with a smile, “ and this afternoon I have to measure all our current furniture so we can decide what we’re taking with us, and how it will fit into our new space.”

Moving’s never easy, and Sydenham Medical Clinic’s move is particularly challenging for it’s essential to keep down-time to a minimum throughout the whole exercise.

Sydenham’s clinic is a part of the Rural Kingston Family Health Organization (FHO); an administrative body made up of the physician-led clinics in Sydenham, Verona, Sharbot Lake, Newburgh, Tamworth and Northbrook. Dr Dietrich is the lead physician for the FHO.

For many years the medical clinic has operated from a rented building on Campbell Road, south of Sydenham. Over the years as services have expanded, space has become increasingly tight, and staff is looking forward to moving into their new, much more spacious location on Rutledge Road, just past Silverbrook Garden Centre. (Darryl Silver, who purpose-built the new structure to accommodate the clinic, will be their new landlord.)

Family practitioners Jeanette Dietrich, Steve Ingo and Jack Raleigh, nurses Meredith Prikker and Blaine Montroy and nurse practitioner Trisha Warren make up the core staff. As well, a counsellor comes weekly from the Kingston Community Counselling Centre to help women dealing with violence and domestic abuse, a nutritionist comes for a day every other week, and once a month an asthma nurse is in attendance. Two full-time receptionists, Tracy Semeniuk and Lorie Webb answer phones, coordinate appointments and help keep records organized; no small task in such a busy centre. They are assisted by Mary Day and Emma Stott who work part-time on reception, and Ms Stott also scans documents.

Each physician has their own roster of patients, and they share weekend and holiday ‘on call’ duty, and they rotate doing Monday evening clinics.  

Nurse Meredith Prikker’s position was created in 2010 and is contract funded by a Ministry of Health (MOH) program called ‘500 Nurses’. Prikker works closely with the Rural Kingston Health Link, established to provide better coordination of care for people with complex medical/social needs. She often makes house calls, providing care for frail seniors and connecting them with resources and other agencies within the community. Prikker also teams with the nurse in Verona to provide courses to help people who are dealing with chronic pain or disease.

The new larger building will be more comfortable and efficient with separate storage space for paper records*, more examination rooms, full accessibility (entries, halls, washrooms) and a large paved parking area on the same level as the main door. A separate exit door will provide easy access for ambulance pick-ups, but not  ambulance drop-offs (as was stated in a previous article).

Moving day’s this week: the office will be closed Thursday and Friday June 22, 23, and the morning of Monday June 26.

* “Aren’t all records electronic these days?” The law requires that medical records must be kept for ten years after last contact, and Dietrich explained that in most cases, it’s inefficient to put hours into scanning piles of historical paper into an electronic system, if there’s minimal likelihood of their being needed again.

Mikeal Teal had just turned 16. He was starting a summer job at Sunset's campground. He was in the midst of his first relationship and had just received his driver's license. He was thinking about buying a car. He was a devoted son and brother.
Those were the positive aspects of his life, but he also had many pressures, which all culminated in a final suicide attempt in the early hours of the morning on May 15th. He died five days later at Roger Nielson House, next to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa.

His mother Leslee, step-father Al Whan and sisters Alley and Sidney are devastated, but they are also angry and determined that the mental health system that they say failed Mike gets fixed, and soon.

They sat in the kitchen of their home, which is tucked in next to the edge of a narrow bay off Sharbot Lake and the Trans-Canada Trail, as the trees were still leafing out around them last Friday morning (May 27). It made for a peaceful backdrop to the agony in their voices as they went over, for the hundredth time, the string of events from the last few days oftheir son’s life. They also reflected on the previous weeks, months and even years of their son's troubled life. They were raw with exhaustion and emotion, sometimes grasping for details as they told their story.

But they are determined to do something about the fact that, in their view and experience, children and adults in serious trouble are just patted on the back and sent home when they attempt to harm themselves, and it is a matter of urgency for them because Mike's girlfriend in Kingston has been facing her own difficulties since his death.

“This is a nightmare that no family should have to endure,” said Al Whan.

According to his mother Leslee, Mike faced pressures in school and elsewhere for many years.

“He was very protective of his sisters, and me. He worried about me,” she said.

And suicide had already touched him, as his father hung himself when Mike was only 7.

Mike’s fragile circumstances took a real turn in March of 2016, when his maternal grandfather, with whom he was very close, died suddenly.

A couple of months later a social worker Mike was seeing from Pathways for Children and Youth demanded that he seek treatment in hospital for his mental health issues, a process that was ultimately ineffective.

In the late fall things took a further turn for the worse, when in an effort to protect the reputation of his younger sister, he got into a violent fight with a boy at Granite Ridge High School. The fight started at the park near the school and ended up within school property. It led to Mike being expelled from school, further cutting him off socially. He began a relationship shortly after that, with a girl from Kingston, but his circumstances kept deteriorating and suicidal thoughts haunted him over and over again.

In January he told a doctor at the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team, where he went weekly to monitor his medication, that he had attemped suicide. That time he was brought to CHEO for 5 days, and was sent home with adjusted medication.

In February, after ice fishing with Al, “he took off ahead of me on his bike across the lake and  at full speed and he ran off the road. He wouldn't say what he was doing or trying to do or anything. Mike told his doctors about that event as well,” Al recalled.

In March he downed two bottles, 50 pills in all, of his anti-depressant medication and was rushed to Perth hospital and then to CHEO, where he remained overnight and was released the next morning.

Then, in late April, he drove his ATV down the trail to a secluded spot where he slashed his wrists and then drove at break-neck speed back towards home, helmetless.  A police search party found him just off the trail and he was taken to Kingston General Hospital by ambulance.

“He told the doctor 'I don't want to be alive – help me,’ and the doctor said the cuts on his arms were not that deep and we should adjust his medication and watch him carefully,” said Al Whan, “The doctor told us that Mike 'doesn't have a plan', and his suicide attempts were not enough of a reason for them to keep him and get him some help. ‘He doesn’t have a plan,’ I can’t forget those words.”

“I asked the doctor if that meant I was on suicide watch again, and he didn’t say anything, just said we should keep an eye on him,” said Leslee.

“We kept asking for help, we kept trying to watch him, to make sure he was ok, to look for the signs, but he needed real help, not just a change in dosage, said Whan.

Ten days later, Mike spent Mother’s Day helping Leslee strip the floor in the family kitchen, preparing to put a new floor in. At one in the morning, his girlfriend called Leslee and said Mike’s messages had gone from wifi to text and she knew he wasn’t in the house and was worried about him. Al ran down stairs to his bedroom in the basement of the house and found the room was full of blood but Mike wasn’t there. He found him a short time later. He had cut himself in his room and was hanging in a tree by the lake. Al cut him down and called 911. He still had a pulse but he had been without oxygen for too long.

Both of Mikes parents are now very worried about his girlfriend.

“And the hospital is doing the same thing, refusing to take her in for long term treatment, just sending her home with new medication,” said Al Whan.

“This is what needs to stop. Doctors, the system needs to start taking people seriously and treating them. Telling people not to worry because their children or cousins or brothers “don't have a plan” did not work for Mike and won't work for anyone else.”

Mikeal Teal's parents are committed to bringing change about in the system and are planning to bring as much attention as possible to his plight in order to make that happen. They have contacted politicians and media outlets and are considering a fund raising campaign to keep a public focus on mental health and suicide.

Frontenac Paramedic services took some initiative a few years ago establishing paramedicine services, which involve making use of paramedic infrastructure and staff capacity to provide services aimed at preventing the kinds of catastrophic medical events that lead to 911 calls for service. To that end, with funding from the county and provincial grant money a wellness clinic in Marysville, on Wolfe Island, was established, and later visiting clinics at Diners clubs across the County have been set up. Now the province has established Paramedicine as an ongoing program and has tasked the Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN’s) with distributing funding to local paramedic services.

It’s all a bit confusing because the boundaries that the LHIN’s are using don’t correspond to our service boundaries,” said Frontenac Chief of Paramedic Services Paul Charbonneau.

While there is only $312,000 available for programming in the southeast LHIN territory, which includes 6 counties  (Hastings, Prince Edward, Lennox and Addington, Frontenac, Lanark, and Leeds Grenville) and the City of Kingston, $58,000 of that money must be allocated to Frontenac Paramedic Services to continue the programs that are already in place.

“We are glad of the guaranteed funding,” said Charbonneau, “and we will be preparing a submission for some new initiatives.”

One possibility is to set up a clinic in a social housing complex in the City of Kingston, where Frontenac Paramedic Services delivers service.

“One of the positive aspects of paramedicine for our paramedics is it can be a good fit for older paramedics,” he said.

Charbonneau is hoping Frontenac County will be able to secure $100,000 or so in funding out of the $362,000 that is available by designing highly effective programs for vulnerable population sectors in Kingston and Frontenac.

No user fees on K&P Traill
Last fall, Frontenac County Council entered into an agreement with the Eastern Ontario Traills Alliance (EOTA) to manage the soon to be completed  K&P Traill between the southern border of the county and the trailhead in Sharbot Lake for an annual price of $400 per kilometre. The Tweed based Not-For-Profit Corporation manages a network of trails across Eastern Ontario, including the popular ATV oriented trails in North Frontenac. It has been very successful over the past ten years as an ATV tourism marketing and trail management agency. Most EOTA trail users pay annual trail fees, and the trails are motorised.

The K&P Trail is a hybrid, however. ATV’s are not permitted from Verona South and are permitted to the north.

The maintenance agreement with EOTA stipulated that no fees would be charged for the section of trail from Sharbot Lake to the South, but at a county budget meeting in November a discussion took place about the amount of funding that the County is spending on trails and some members of council argued that trails should be “self-sustainable”.

According to the staff account from that meeting  “it was questioned if the County should start looking at charging a user fee as most other recreational areas such as Big Sandy Bay and other Trails charge a user fee. Subsequently, an action item was requested to have the Community Development Advisory Committee review the Trails Master Plan to look at including user fees”.

But in a report to Council from Clerk Janette Amini, the fact that a bylaw as passed establishing a no-fee contract, it would require a complicated set of procedures to unpack the contract in order to consider adding fees.

In response to Amini’s report, Frontenac Islands Mayor Dennis Doyle, who speculated about a fee in the first place, did not comment.

South Frontenac Councilor John McDougall said “we can make it clear now to everyone that there will be no fee to use the trail.”