Connect with us

Community

Hospice’s Handbag Lunch is SOLD OUT!

Published

3 minute read

update:

(Red Deer, AB) – Tickets for Red Deer Hospice’s popular HandBag Lunch sold out in 48 hours.

This popular event is held every other year and limited to just 200 tickets so sells out very quickly.

Sponsored by Sunreal Property Management and held at the Sheraton Hotel, the event features a delicious 3-course lunch, entertainment, and the opportunity to bid on designer handbags.

Each luncheon table features new designer handbags as center pieces which guests have the opportunity to bid on in a sealed auction format.  Bids are not visible to other guests and at the end of the luncheon the highest bidder on each bag takes it home.  Proceeds support resident care at Red Deer Hospice.

All handbags are donated with 36 received to date and more arriving at Hospice daily.   Donated Bags must be new and accompanied by a purchase receipt or price tag for charitable receipting purposes.  To donate contact Lori at Red Deer Hospice 403-309-4344 ext. 109 or [email protected].

 

Original article:

August 1, 2018

(Red Deer, AB) – Tickets for Red Deer Hospice’s popular HandBag Lunch go on sale August 1st at www.reddeerhospice.com or by calling Hospice directly (Lori: 403-309-4344 ext. 109 or [email protected])

This event is held every other year and limited to just 200 tickets which sell out very quickly.

Gather your friends and join us Wednesday, September 12th at the Sheraton Hotel for a delicious 3-course lunch, entertainment, and the opportunity to bid on designer handbags.

Each table will feature a new designer handbag as a center piece and luncheon guests will have the opportunity to bid on the bags in a sealed auction format.  Bids will be not be visible to other guests and at the end of the luncheon the highest bidder on each bag will take it home.

Tickets are just $45 and the luncheon runs from noon to 2pm so easily fits into the business day!

Handbag donations are still being accepted. Phone Lori at Red Deer Hospice to purchase tickets or donate.

About Hospice: Our highly specialized, professional staff and trained volunteers are dedicated to caring for the terminally ill and improving quality of life. Specialized nursing staff provide 24-hour care with the guidance and support of our Nurse Manager. Working together, we strive to preserve a sense of dignity and provide the specialized nursing, pain and symptom management, and emotional and spiritual support that eases our residents’ pain and discomfort, and prepares them and their loved ones to say goodbye.
Read  more stories about our community on Todayville.com.

 

 

Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

Published on

Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

Continue Reading

Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X