Dear Editor:
RE: Hospital, clinic separate, June 3.
I found it troubling that the only response from my letter (Cheap shot, May 27) was to be informed that Groves Memorial Community Hospital is not involved “in any way” with the Trailside Medical Clinic and its paid parking issue.
The lady who responded was technically right, of course, but it only served to highlight the total disconnect with reality that has happened here.
It is my opinion that the new Groves hospital is involved to some extent regarding the medical laboratory, simply by long standing association. The lab occupied the old ambulance garage on the old hospital ground for at least 28 years, that I know of and shared all available free parking.
It was apparently wrongly assumed that the new hospital would somehow accommodate a similar gesture and nobody really asked about it. Again, it was assumed that fair play and logic would prevail when people donated money to “the great cause”.
Can history suddenly cease to exist? Yes, we certainly know that two plus two equals four, but we are not numbers; we are people and don’t expect to get thrown under the bus like this by other people with very short memories. A similar situation exists regarding the doctors.
We have never paid for parking in Fergus and we also expected this to continue. Is the Trailside facility so poorly financed that paid parking was required to keep it open? If so, why did the lab and doctors move there? What was wrong with the old places they used to operate from that seemed to manage without paid parking? Seriously, what is going on here?
Malcolm McCulloch,
Fergus