Sometimes it is difficult to prove one’s words without concrete evidence. Everyone has their own account of what is factual or fiction. Equally, everyone can choose what to believe, or not to believe.

When the “anonymous” responder to this topic has no recollection of the city or the councilors doing anything to aid in securing a suitable site for a new ambulance station, this is likely a factual statement. Factual because there is no possible way this person could know everything that went on behind the scenes and how many conversations and brainstorming sessions took place in Revelstoke’s search for a solution.

This one issue is very similar to many others that crossed over the Council table where the majority of the public has no real grasp of the hard work that goes on behind closed doors to make things work. The Council in place during this time was successful and functional as a team and was led by a mayor with high-level leadership qualities. Contrary to what has been suggested by some people, that same Mayor, Mark McKee, and Council cared very much about the local paramedic situation.

The “anonymous” writer also credits a couple of ambulance crew members for their attempts to find suitable space. I extend equal credit to the Mayor and Council of the day and to the BCAS Area Superintendent for their arduous but often non-publicized attempts to do the same. This was all in the interest of providing our local paramedics a deserved and long-overdue facility to work from.

Comments needing clarification are the assertions made by Antoinette Halberstadt and the comments about her personal expectations of Mark McKee while he was Mayor.

To be specific I will defend Mr. McKee, the Council and City Administrator during that period by referencing some key facts.

Throughout the process of the BCAS transitioning to a 24-hour on-call system and requiring night accommodation for paramedics there were operational difficulties encountered by not only BCAS staff but also by Revelstoke Fire Department staff. At the time, the BCAS operated out of the Fire Station under a lease agreement and the terms of the agreement became difficult to satisfy.

As Fire Chief one of my responsibilities was to ensure the accommodation and facility were suitable for the tenant and for Fire Department operations. To do so was difficult, but not impossible. It meant that the paramedics’ accommodations would become even less appropriate but none the less still functional.

After several attempts at making suitable alterations to the facility, I was asked personally by Antoinette Halberstadt to stop helping make things work.

Antoinette was the union representative for the local paramedics and I was asked to let things be so that the union could take action against their employer by forcing the issue of lease non-conformance.

The union took action involving external and higher-ranking union officials who ultimately forced their employer to find other accommodation for the paramedics. When this was done the paramedics vacated the Fire Hall well in advance of their lease termination. This was a job action and the media reports and innuendo that the paramedics were kicked out of the fire station were false.

Another one of my responsibilities was to keep the City Administrator, the Mayor and Council informed of the matter. There were many discussions about the issue and my superiors were informed of the request given to me by the local union representative to step aside so they could take a position.

The criticisms directed at Liberal candidate Mark McKee by Antoinette Halberstadt are as unfounded as they are disconcerting.

As a union representative, a newly elected City Councilor and as an NDP official I would expect her to understand why Mr. McKee and many other city elected officials could not and should not intervene in a process involving an external union and a non-municipal management structure.

Antoinette states: “I was the paramedics’ union rep who did the bulk of the legwork, while City Council never came forward to ask for a (lack of) progress report for at least 2 years.”
Antoinette Halberstadt was elected to her local union as their representative and appears to have satisfied her members’ needs by her union dedication.
Mark McKee and the entire Council of the day were elected by the taxpayers and their decisions in this matter were made based on the facts they had before them. Those decisions satisfied the needs of the municipal taxpayers.
In closing I have to agree with the responder “David” where reference is made to everyone working together for the betterment of all. It should be as simple as that.
I can only hope that as a City Councilor, Antoinette Halberstadt will work as hard for the local taxpayers and at being a team player as she does in her unfounded attack on the credibility of BC Liberal candidate Mark McKee.

Wade Rota
Former City of Revelstoke Fire Chief
Revelstoke, BC

You know – ask young people what it’s like to live on $8 an hour, sit down with our seniors and listen to their concerns about cut backs to care by this government, meet with laid off forestry workers, ask teachers how they are coping with overcrowded classrooms, talk to single parents raising their children in poverty while watching expensive taxpayer funded ads about “The Best Place on Earth”, etc. That sort of thing.

Instead it sounds like the Liberal candidate is planning to represent Gordon Campbell first and foremost.

Given Mark’s comments and the NDP’s comments? sorry, but I have to run with Mark.

Nowhere in my comments, above, did I say that the City — and no doubt Mr McKee as Mayor — did not look for or offer land for an ambulance station. Of course that is what a Mayor would do when eventually approached by the Provincial government’s agents when they eventually started looking for property after the citizens set up a hue and cry about the plight of the ambulance service.

So, it must be that I am being confused with one of the ‘Anonymous’s in this blog.

Mr McKee must realize that it is unwise to open up the complex subject of our vacating the couple of rooms we were occupying in the firehall in the first place, due to the expansion of Fire service needs, and with which I find no fault. Suffice it to say, though, that my memory of the situation is as follows:-

The Provincial government’s BC Ambulance agents did not respond to the Fire Chief’s repeated communications in this regard for at least 6 months, and then at the 11th hour — about 3 days before the deadline the Fire Chief had set to them, for us to be out of one of the rooms we were occupying — the Chief offered to extend the deadline for a short while. I advised that that would simply give them an excuse to further delay getting on with plans to build the ambulance station they had first promised 15 years prior.

So, when the deadline day arrived and the Provincial agents had neither found us an alternative nor worked out another plan with the Fire Chief, our office and sleeping quarters for 2 people were squeezed into one room sized about 10 feet by 10 feet. The only place for some of the furniture was on top of the beds. I still have the photo’s.

So yes we left for a motel.

I am not aware of any subsequent invitations for us to move back into the firehall. There wasn’t room for us and our supplies. Sometime not long thereafter, there was also no room for our second ambulance to park in the bay with the fire trucks.

At no time did the Mayor thank us for soldiering on, ask us how we were doing, what we needed, or how they could help in any way to secure an adequate base from which to serve our community. Our Unit Chief of the time reported in fact that the Mayor crossed to the other side of the street whenever she was walking towards him. (And no she is not an NDP hack and so let us not again hear the familiar refrain that this is NDP smoke and mirrors etc etc)

We felt — and still feel — that it is just taken forgranted that we paramedics will always be there, will always respond to calls for help, no matter what our working conditions are. The trouble with us, is that — like wives and mothers — yes, this is how we operate. And I, as Union shop steward, try to improve working conditions so that we don’t burn out and have to quit, and so that we can attract and keep new paramedics.

We were extremely happy when the public strongly supported the rezoning of the land eventually found for a new station, and glad when the Minister eventually announced the funding to build one. The members all say, though, that they worry that it’s just a pre-election ploy, and will only really rejoice when they see the shovel in the ground.

I find your letter more amusing than disturbing, but unfortunately there may people out there who may actually believe you.  Of course, when they find out you are writing this as the president of the NDP riding association and not as a paramedic, i am sure they will have a different perspective.

Let me give you and the readers a little accurate history on the evolution of the ambulance station.

The City of Revelstoke provided space for the ambulance station in the Fire Hall. Whenever anything was needed or any special accommodation asked for it was provided.  You and I both know that you approached one of Revelstoke’s senior staff and told him to stop helping the ambulance situation otherwise you would never get a new station.  

The paramedics then moved out on their own initiative to prove they needed bigger and better accommodations.

They were told on several occasions that they could move back to the Fire Hall at anytime.  

When the provincial government came to town the city was the first place they came to looking for property to build a new station.  We went through all of the property  the city owned looking for an appropriate location and held a neighbourhood meeting to see if  a site it had chosen would be acceptable to the neighbourhood. It  wasn’t. 

I personally called several landowners in town looking for another location to no avail.  I and Council had put aside property for an affordable housing development and it was a chunk of that property that was sold to the government to make a site available for the new ambulance station.

I can say with confidence that I as Mayor, the City Council, City staff and the Fire Hall crew did an exemplary job of looking after the ambulance station, then finding a new site and working towards a new station.  

But of course, it was a BC Liberal government that came through with $2million in funding and we all know that is unacceptable to you.  

And what did our New Democratic Party MLA have to say? His only words were: “They should have done it sooner.”   

I look at this letter and your others on IPPs and I see the same thing: half truths, innuendo and nothing more than a desperate attempt to deceive the public.

You should be applauding the results of a local campaign to house our ambulances and paramedics, instead of crying foul after we achieved some real success.  

I hear at Revelstoke Council meetings you are continually asking for more transparency in Council dealings.  I would suggest you re-examine the way you have conducted yourself in this smear campaign and ask yourself how transparent you have been with the public on this one.