From wartime London to Canada's most idyllic province

Maureen Bicknell had just settled into bed when she heard the roar of an engine.

She looked out the window. It was dark, but the lights of an airliner were visible as it took off from nearby Heathrow Airport.

The three-year-old was almost asleep a few minutes later when an explosion on the street jolted her out of bed. It was the unmistakable sound of a German air raid.

Her mother, Irene, ran into the room. She threw herself on top of Maureen as the ghastly air raid sirens rang out.

“I’m protecting you,” Irene said.

London had underground bomb shelters, but Irene refused to take her daughter there. People had been killed in stampedes before.

“People panic down there when there’s bombs. If we’re going to go, we’ll go above ground,” she told Maureen.

Maureen’s father, Victor Bicknell, was a bombardier in the British army with the 74th field regiment. He had been stationed in Egypt as part of the North African campaign, which began on June 20, 1942.

Shortly after Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed off on the campaign, the German and Italian forces pushed the front from Libya back into Egypt.

The fighting resumed on June 27 in the Egyptian city of Mersa Matruh.

Bicknell was killed in action the next day. He never got to meet his daughter.

Two years later, Irene married Arthur Craig, a corporal in the Canadian army. While he fought on the western front, she worked in a shop making guns and ammunition for the war effort.

By 1945, Nazi Germany was on its last legs and the time had come for Irene and her daughter to board a ship to Canada with other war brides. Maureen was three months shy of her fourth birthday when she left England forever.

They arrived at the port of Liverpool on May 17, ready to board the RMS Queen Mary.

Maureen looked up at the ship. It was an enormous ocean liner, a thousand feet long with three stacks.

There was only one problem. Irene was eight months pregnant. Women that far along in their pregnancy weren’t supposed to travel on the ship.

She remembered the advice her doctor had given her.

“When you board, wear a large coat, suck in your stomach and stick out your butt.”

It worked.

Inside, the vessel was not short on entertainment options. There was a cinema, a squash court, a library and drawing room, restaurants and a cocktail lounge. The Queen Mary even had a furniture store.

Irene had taken her wooden racket and used it at the tennis court.

She and Maureen had a cabin to themselves during the nine-day journey. Maureen spent a lot of her time sitting on the top bunk.

She looked out the porthole. There were several battleships in the ocean beside them. Each one had a battery with guns.

“They don’t look that big to me,” Maureen thought.

The warships escorted the Queen Mary on both sides to protect from enemy attacks.

Maureen’s mind wandered to the porthole itself. Small and round, she wondered what would happen if she opened it. Would she fall out?

A few days later, she got seasick. The ship’s nurse came along with medicine, but Maureen refused to open her mouth.

“I don’t want it.”

The nurse returned. Maureen looked up.

It was the biggest orange she had ever seen.

“If you take the medicine, this orange is yours.”

She did what she was told. Fruit was a rare treat.

The ship was crowded. There were 102 children on board, along with their mothers. Some of them were teenagers.

Maureen felt intimidated, but she did befriend one boy her age.

It was May 25. Eight days had passed since they left Liverpool. It was time for lunch. A waitress passed out the menus.

Maureen looked down at the kids menu. There were lots of options, a far cry from the food rationing in London. She ordered boiled eggs and peach cream cake.

Irene ordered potage minestrone soup and coffee from the adult menu.

The next day, May 26, Maureen looked out the porthole. The shores of Nova Scotia were visible in the distance.

After nine days on the North Atlantic, the Queen Mary docked at Pier 21 in Halifax harbour.

Irene and Maureen made their way off the ship and were herded into a two-storey brick building housing the immigration offices. When that was done, they went to the assembly hall on the second floor.

Maureen looked across the hall. A large man dressed in a dark blue uniform and cap was approaching them.

“I’m Gilbert Bell, Arthur’s brother-in-law,” he told Irene.

He was a captain on one of the ferries that operated between Borden, P.E.I., and Cape Tormentine, N.B.

Bell drove them to their new home on the Point Road in Tryon, P.E.I., where Arthur’s parents lived.

Maureen's new grandparents ran a large farm. She looked out at the property. There were cows, hens and geese, which she had never seen before.

Her brother Jimmy was born less than a month after they arrived on the Island.

When Arthur came home from the war, the family bought a mixed farm on the Branch Road. They owned two horses and a cow, and geese that were fattened and sold to pay for groceries.

Irene and Maureen became Canadian citizens on Nov. 16, 1976.

"It feels kick ass": old garage morphs into creative performance space

Lights and sounds spilled out of a Kent Street garage Oct. 11.

Inside were students in the School of Performing Arts at Holland College performing for the first time in their new rehearsal space.

Outside were fellow students, staff and dignitaries witnessing the grand opening of the garage.

SoPA students had awaited the chance to perform in the new space for months, said vocalist Jocelyn Reyome, whose impassioned Alicia Keys rendition closed out the ceremony.

“We were super anxious over the summer and we finally found out it was opening. We were jumping at the opportunity to perform.”

The original garage was built by the Duncan family, who owned the property for nearly a century. It required a full makeover, complete with new equipment and light and sound systems.

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency provided $29,325 in funding for the project. Students from the college’s heritage retrofit carpentry program worked on the rebuild.

Performing arts students will make full use of the new facility, said Reyome, a Massachusetts native.

“It feels kick ass. A lot of other schools don’t have this opportunity to have such an up-to-date performing studio. We feel that we’re lucky and we definitely want to take advantage of it.”

Two of the program’s 11 ensembles performed during the opening with hits from Stevie Wonder and the Black Keys, among others.

Bahamian percussionist Josh Wright was impressed with the new space.

“The lights, even down to the sound, it’s perfect, absolutely perfect. (There are) things we can do in here and push ourselves a little bit further.”

Having another space to rehearse will help accommodate the more than 50 students in the program, said West Virginia guitarist Connor Mowery.

“It definitely opens things up. Now we have this nice, big extra practice space, so we have a lot more things going on at one time. Multiple ensembles can be practising all over campus at once.”

During his remarks, Charlottetown MP Sean Casey said he had “great admiration” for the performances on display.

“You can feel the creativity vibrating within these walls.”

PEI struggling to recruit psychiatrists

Suicidal patients could be turned away from the emergency room without receiving treatment due to the province’s psychiatrist shortage, says P.E.I’s chief of mental health and addictions.

Heather Keizer spoke to the standing committee for health and wellness Oct. 3 about the government’s plan to get back to a full complement of 15 psychiatrists. There are 9.5 full-time equivalent working on the Island now.

“It’s conceivable” a suicidal patient could be discharged from the ER without seeing a psychiatrist, Keizer said.

“We should have 15 psychiatrists on call in our emergency room. We have 4.7.”

That means there are now ER shifts with no psychiatric coverage. In the meantime, video conference sessions with off-Island psychiatrists are being used and ER physicians are “well-trained” in suicide risk assessments, Keizer said.

Mental health advocate Sarah Stewart-Clark said she was “very startled” to learn the extent of the shortage.

“I think we’ve all been working from this number (11) that was provided by the province.”

Part of the problem is, during past shortages, the province hired some psychiatrists who were less than suitable, Keizer said.

“Those who have exited have done so in response to a performance review.”

The province has been very accommodating to potential candidates, Henderson said, but that isn’t enough when contending with larger jurisdictions for psychiatrists, he added.

“We have to be more competitive than we are.”

Keizer has been busy interviewing candidates to fill P.E.I.’s recommended complement of 15 psychiatrists, with a focus on Canadian schools.

Committee chair Jordan Brown suggested the government should reach out to Islanders during their first four years of medical school and persuade them to specialize in psychiatry.

Visa issues have delayed the arrival of psychiatrist Dr. Mahesh Nachnani. Henderson told The Guardian on Sept. 3 Nachnani had already been practising on P.E.I. for two weeks.

When she worked in a similar-sized jurisdiction in Ontario, the region had six psychiatrists for a population of 150,000, Keizer said.

“The burden of illness was less. Since I moved here, I’ve seen more severe, more illness, more regularly.”

Mental health expert Todd Leader, who is consulting with Health P.E.I., said he used a work-around situation during a shortage in the South Shore Health Authority in Nova Scotia.

Psychiatrists spent some time each week taking consultation calls from family doctors to allow them to make informed medication decisions.

“It worked great and the doctors’ competence increased over time while we kept working on the psychiatry recruitment challenge.”

Although she approves of the suggested solutions, Stewart-Clark said it will take more than words to restore faith in the provincial government and its handling of mental health. 

“I think, after the past year, people have lost trust in our health minister and in Health P.E.I. to manage our mental health system. That trust has to be built back up and it can only be built back up by action.”

Psychiatrist shortage impacting ER patients

Growing up, Tristen Garnhum wanted to be a mechanic or a chef. Now the 19-year-old just wants to stay alive.

Diagnosed with Asperger’s, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, Garnhum is coping with a mental health crisis and a psychiatrist shortage is making things worse, says his mother, Melody.

He has been in and out of the emergency room since Sept. 25, but he has not been admitted.

On Oct. 3, he tried to hang himself in the ER bathroom.

He has gone entire days at the ER without seeing a psychiatrist and has attempted suicide before, Melody said.

“If they were to release my son today, I guarantee you within weeks I’d be burying him.

"Until now, he’s been fighting getting help. This time he’s asking for it. So I know the situation has drastically changed.”

The province has 4.7 full-time equivalent psychiatrists able to work in the emergency room at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and since Sept. 29 there have been shifts with no psychiatrist on call.

The government should have warned the public about the lack of psychiatric coverage, said mental health advocate Sarah Stewart-Clark.

“The fact that the health minister didn't make us aware of that and communicate their plan to get patients through this safely, that was very upsetting to learn.

“When we're not even able to cover call at the hospital, that's very troubling. We need to have coverage for the proportion of our population at a crisis point.”

The psychiatrists and physicians who are available aren’t doing enough to help Tristen, said Garnhum.

“I blame psychiatrists who don’t listen to the families, who don’t really listen to the patients and just shove medication.”

The situation is complicated by previous criminal charges that prevent Tristen from living with minors, which means he can’t live at home.

“(ER doctors) feel it’s a housing situation, not a mental health situation. Yes, the housing situation has aggravated his mental health issues. That I will not deny. But he’s there because of his mental health issues,” Garnhum said.

She has been told, however, Tristen will not be sent home without getting help.

Attempts to contact Health Minister Robert Henderson for help have gone nowhere, Garnhum said. She blames the provincial government for not providing enough funding to provide adequate psychiatric coverage.

“Robert Henderson should never have been handed that portfolio. He does not know how to manage it. He does not care enough. That portfolio deserves a politician who cares about people.”

Garnhum plans to continue fighting for change in the system, for her son and the many others who need help.

“My son is not a statistic. I’m not going to let my son become a statistic. He deserves to have a future.”

P.E.I. mental health system must be client-centred: expert

The key to an effective P.E.I. mental health system is to make it client-centred and focus on early intervention, says a Nova Scotia mental health expert.

Registered psychologist and social worker Todd Leader laid out his vision for a better system in his book, It’s Not About Us: The Secret to Transforming the Mental Health and Addiction System in Canada.

Leader, who has consulted with Health P.E.I. for about three months, gave a public talk Wednesday at UPEI. At the core of his approach is a system designed around the client every step of the way.

“If the client was my mother or my son, how would I want this part of the system to work? It’s a personal question, not a professional question. Whatever the answer is, that’s the definition of a client-centred system,” said Leader.

“If at every step of the client’s journey through the program, they ask that question, they’ll end up designing policies that are efficient for the client.”

The title of Leader’s book means the system is about the users, not the workers, who must deal with inconvenience for the sake of the client.

Transforming the system “doesn’t happen without struggle and without pissing people off,” Leader said.

The P.E.I. government consultant said Health P.E.I. is “completely committed to this kind of approach and are trying to figure out the process to make that transition … I give them kudos for embracing the concept and starting the journey.”

The talk was attended by three MLAs. Health minister Rob Henderson was not among them.

Leader’s strategy was implemented in the South Shore Health Authority in Nova Scotia and resulted in wait times dropping from eight months to four to six weeks, without any new funding.

Leader stressed that the clients of the mental health system are the entire public, not just those who use it or those who are mentally ill.

“The mandate is not to provide services – it’s to improve health,” he said.

His plan addresses that by incorporating social and emotional learning into the school curriculum, reducing demand over time.

“There is tons of scientific evidence that if we teach our kids to understand and manage their emotions, those kids grow up with lower rates of mental illness and addiction. If we ignore this part of it, we are always going to have a capacity problem.”

Among Leader’s ideas to increase the supply to meet the demand is removing clinicians from non-clinical meetings, which would free up appointments and reduce wait times.

“It’s about picking apart every single part of the path and maximizing the use of resources for the sake of the client.”

Dr. Sarah Stewart-Clark, the organizer of the #HowManyWade mental health advocacy campaign, said reading Leader’s book gave her new hope for the future.

“In many ways it aligns with the asks in our campaign and I think it's an exciting direction for the province to go in.”

The Facebook campaign publicized stories from 100 families whose needs are not being met by the system and has helped make mental health a hot topic in the Island’s political discourse.

Stewart-Clark said Leader’s vision is finally an answer to the urgent need that has existed for many years. She agrees with Leader that proactive intervention to prevent personal crisis is “desperately needed.”

Part of Leader’s focus is on making the system easier to navigate and access. He said sitting in waiting rooms, not knowing what number to call for help and not having a “warm, compassionate person” answer that phone are all examples that can make the user’s condition worse.

“Waiting rooms are harder on mental health patients than others. It reinforces their low self-esteem and causes the issue they’re there to treat.”

His solution in Nova Scotia was to instruct all mental health professionals to drop everything and meet clients at their appointment time.

Stewart-Clark cautioned the province must deal with the current backlog of users in crisis before it can move forward with Leader’s approach.

“We're not exactly in a place to adopt that plan fully until we address the reality that on the spectrum of mental illness, we are far on the side of severe crises because individuals have not had care for so long.

“The system has been ineffective for so long and we need to address that first.”

Sports startup The Athletic captures veteran scribes' imagination

Michael Russo has covered the National Hockey League for 22 years. This season, he’ll finally be able to watch the third period.

Russo is among the growing number of sports journalists to leave newspapers recently for an online sports media startup called The Athletic.

Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann founded the ambitious project with funding from Y Combinator, an American start-up accelerator, in the summer of 2016.

The site launched in Chicago that year, hiring long-time sports writers to cover the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox. It soon expanded to Toronto and beyond.

Subscribers pay a monthly fee to read coverage of pro sports teams across North America.

Russo was among the writers approached by The Athletic during a round of expansion this summer. He had covered the Minnesota Wild for the Star-Tribune since 2005. It would not be an easy sell – or so he thought.

“I had no interest in leaving the Star-Tribune. The newspaper treated me incredibly well,” Russo said.

That changed quickly when he spoke with Mather in early August.

“It kind of turned my life inside out. When you have a conversation with Alex, you immediately realize why they’re so successful. He had me sold on the first phone call. If I had to sign up that day, I would’ve taken the job.”

Russo was already doing his dream job. To jump to a startup with an unproven subscriber model and no advertising, some assurances were required. Could The Athletic afford to pay so many writers? Was their expansion to more than a dozen cities sustainable?

“They really had to sell me on stuff beyond money and security (as well). They had to sell me on creativity and space constraints and total autonomy. And that’s why I did it,” said Russo.

As much as the New York native loved his job, the inevitable constraints of writing for a newspaper wore on him. Space was at a premium and often dependent on whether the Vikings, Timberwolves or Twins were playing.

Russo’s last five stories for the Star-Tribune were cut in half in print. He understands the sacrifices that must be made in the modern print industry, but when The Athletic came calling, he realized it didn’t have to be that way.

“Slowly but surely, I started to see our newspaper shrinking. I kind of got frustrated by that, and I was thinking, ‘man, how cool would it be if I’m the one who decides what the length is and what I write and when I write it?’ I took the plunge.”

Veteran Columbus Dispatch sports writer Aaron Portzline chose to join The Athletic after almost 30 years in the print business, including the last 17 seasons covering the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Portzline’s love for newspapers runs deep, but the 47-year-old recognizes the industry is on very shaky ground at the moment. He chose to secure his future on his own terms rather than being potentially blindsided by future layoffs.

“They are the paper of record. They are a watchdog. That stuff means a ton to me, but I think newspapers everywhere are struggling,” Portzline said.

“Is there going to be a newspaper in 18 years for me to retire from? I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

The shackles are off

            John Tortorella likes to swear. A lot.

            Since the Blue Jackets hired him as their head coach two years ago, Portzline has been the man charged with censoring him.

            Portzline doesn’t have to do it anymore.

            “Whenever you talk to Torts, he’s dropping F-bombs. He cusses like a sailor. In the print model, you’re putting the word expletive in parentheses. The Athletic’s policy is to let it run. It’s a little weird typing that word and realizing this is going to be in print,” said Portzline.

            Four-letter words weren’t the primary reason Portzline jumped ship, though.

Beat writers for major dailies usually face a deadline of just minutes after the final buzzer to submit their game recap. This forces them to spend most of the third period writing instead of watching.

“You end up writing these stories and if there’s a late goal and you want to do it justice, you’re ripping up everything at the last possible minute,” Portzline said. “Sometimes you feel like you put in a long, long day at the rink, and you’re not necessarily proud of anything you did because it was so rushed and cramped.”

For Portzline, the decision to leave the Dispatch was not taken lightly, but the notion of having some “elbow room” and unlimited space appealed to him.

“There are times where people really open up and tell us very meaningful stories, and to not be able to do that justice in print is really frustrating after a while, when you just can’t present the nuances of a story.”

Working for a web-only outlet allows print lifers to expand their coverage and explore new ways of presenting the story. That was part of the attraction for Russo.

“I feel like the ability to write (at The Athletic) and write creatively and write really good, meaty stories is plentiful. I like to write longform, I like to write personality profiles, I like to write opinionated, I like to write analytically, and that stuff in the newspaper is very difficult to do.”

Both writers have already taken advantage of that freedom. Portzline recently penned a 3,000-word story about Ohio State’s failure to capitalize on a wave of hockey talent coming out of Columbus, where the university is located. Russo constructed a 2,000-word feature on Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau and his love for hockey.

            Portzline expects more from himself now that he can cover the Blue Jackets however he wants.

            “There are no excuses now. You can’t say the story sucked because the deadline was brutal, or you couldn’t do it justice. Put up or shut up.”

Reader-driven content changes the game

Russo is putting more pressure on himself to produce good writing since his move to The Athletic. He knows people are paying to read his work.

A monthly subscription is required to view content, so Russo’s readers are now invested in his coverage, something he said is “very humbling” to see.

His biggest fear in leaving the Star-Tribune was the paper's massive exposure. Whether people wanted to read his work or not, if they got the paper, they got him. But his concerns have been allayed by the unique reader-writer relationship at The Athletic.

“The reality is that these people are paying to specifically read me, which means their passion toward the sport is greater. They’re fans of mine. All of a sudden, you’re getting the best of the best of fans. You can see the person you’re writing for.”

             Portzline has also noticed the change in his reader base. Many of those readers followed him from the Dispatch to his new home behind a paywall.

“It’s a pretty specialized group of people who stand alone in their passion for their team, and also the media they consume. People feel like they’re part of something different. The only way to keep that edge is to continue to crank out the high quality stuff people feel they can’t get anywhere else.”

Along with their growing roster of beat writers who cover specific teams, The Athletic also recently hired veteran scribes Pierre LeBrun and Ken Rosenthal to anchor their national coverage of the NHL and Major League Baseball, respectively.

 “Their goal is to be the local sports section in every market, along with the ability to read (national writers like LeBrun and Rosenthal),” said Russo. “They want to hire the best sports writers they absolutely can. The way that this industry is shrinking right now, there’s obviously a ton of talent out there and they’re definitely scooping it up,” said Russo.

Russo and Portzline were both nominated for the Red Fisher award this year, which recognizes the best beat writer in the NHL. Both of them feel The Athletic has limitless potential.

“I believe in The Athletic wholeheartedly,” said Portzline.

Russo initially had to be convinced that the site’s business model was sustainable. Now, he’s on board.

“They’re doing their job back at headquarters. Now it’s up to the talent they’ve hired to really do its job. I think it’s going to grow and grow and grow, especially if they continue to get talent and people realize what type of product they can potentially get here.”