Oct. 19, 1988
Mary ‘almost’ had a new liver
East Sooke resident Mary Deplancke thought that after 58 days of waiting she would get her liver transplant Sunday, but was disappointed to learn at the last moment that the liver was too small and it went to a younger person.
“It was very disappointing for me,” she told the Mirror from her hospital bed in London, Ont.
“I was informed by my doctor Saturday afternoon that the transplant team was flying to Calgary to get the liver of a young woman who had died in an accident.”
They told me that I had a 60-40 chance of getting the liver, so my husband Tom and I were pretty excited, she said.
Sunday morning, before the doctors returned from Calgary, hospital staff were still preparing Mary for the operation.
“I was just going to have my bath which is the last thing before going to the operating room, when my doctor came in and said that he was sorry, but tests had shown that the liver was too small and it went to a younger person,” she said.
(Editor’s note: she later received a liver transplant)
Oct. 21, 1998
School district comes up with cash for long overdue landscaping at EMCS
The Sooke school district is earmarking $6,500 to pay unionized staff to spruce up the school grounds in front of Edward Milne community school, according to school district secretary-treasurer, Dave Lockyer.
The long overdue landscaping project at the three-year-old $19.6-million school has been a contentious community issue.
Unforeseen construction expenses and an unwillingness by the provincial government to fork over any more cash for the capital project, has left the school perched on first barren and then weed-infested land.
A volunteer-initiated landscaping effort to clean up the eyesore earlier this summer came to a halt when the management complained that the volunteers would be performing work that should be done by unionized school staff.
Now Lockyer said some of the proceeds from the sale of a teacherage within the district will be used to pay staff to do the work.
Oct. 14, 1992
Mentorship program targets troubled Sooke teenagers
Kids with too much time on their hands have been pinpointed as a cause of Sooke’s rising crime rate.
The Sooke-Jordan River Chamber of Commerce wants to put those hands to work.
The Chamber wants to talk to the Sooke School District about adapting their mentorship program as a means of keeping kids in school. Only school would not be the classroom. It would be the workplace.
Chamber spokesperson John Neiwenhuis said the way the high school system is designed is great, but only for the academic students heading to college of university.
“What do you do with the kids that don’t want to go there?” he said.
The Chamber wants to zero in on potential drop-outs and those with no plans of further academic education and connect them with tradesmen who can give them on-the-job training.
Oct. 19, 2005
18 apply for Sooke council
There are 18 people running for one of the six open Sooke council seats, and another three taking a shot at the mayor’s position.
The list of council candidates includes people who have run before but lost out on a chance at a council seat, newcomers to politics and the former MLA for the Sooke area.
Mayor Janet Evans is taking a shot at re-election, facing a challenge from councillor George OBrain and also from Bob Sykes — who once ran unsuccessfully for a Sooke council seat.
Erik Lund, the current CRD regional director, is being challenged by Brian Henson, the man who was the CRD regional director the previous term.
