Walk, for a moment, in the footsteps of an immigrant or refugee newly arrived in Peterborough.

As a stranger in a strange land, everything is, well, strange. Add fear of the unknown to the equation. Trepidation rules as they wonder whom to turn to for the most basic of goods and services, including access to health care.

Enter Dr. Madura Sundareswaran who, on January 10th, opened the Peterborough Newcomer Health Clinic.

Initiated and operated in close conjunction with the New Canadians Centre, her clinic — located in a space provided by the Peterborough Family Health Team — is open a half day per week. Its client roster is comprised of immigrants and refugees recently relocated to the city.

“The clinic’s mandate is to help clients transition to the Canadian health care system,” says Dr. Sundareswaran, a family physician who has provided primary care to patients since she opened her practice in November 2019.

“Clients will be followed for six to nine months, depending on their vaccination status. The types of things we’re doing are orientation to the Canadian health care system, immunization catch-up, prescription refills, and referrals to specialists that might be necessary. On discharge, we provide a list of services that are available in the community for them to continue to get the help they need.”

Relatively new to Peterborough herself, having completed her residency here in 2018 after graduating from medical school at the University of Alberta, Dr. Sundareswaran is a first-generation Canadian, her parents having come to Canada from Sri Lanka and settling in Toronto where she was raised.

Once settled in the city, and in her practice, she became acquainted with the New Canadians Centre and the work it does daily to help newcomers get acclimatized to their new home.

“I wondered how their perceptions of, and experiences with, the health care system had been up to this point,” recalls Dr. Sundareswaran. “We started a research project studying the barriers to accessing primary care for immigrants and refugees here in Peterborough.”

“A lot of the research that existed already was done in big metropolitan cities. There wasn’t a lot (of research done) in a community the size of Peterborough, which has its own unique features. We don’t have the same resources for refugees in the concentration you would have somewhere the size of Toronto.”

“I heard the perspectives of people trying to help their clients navigate the (health care) system but I became fully aware of my own challenges with my practice,” Dr. Sundareswaran says. “Your everyday family doctor doesn’t have the same tools and resources to provide the level of comprehensive care needed for those new to the city — coordinating interpreters and budgeting for the extra visit time and the extra administrative support you need. It just isn’t there.”

Recognizing that void, and wanting to do something about it, Dr. Sundareswaran contacted the New Canadians’ Centre in June 2022 and asked “How can we address this gap in health care that I’m hearing exists?”

“There were a lot of meetings with my partners at the centre and a lot of brainstorming on how a model like this could work. I needed to understand not just how the centre operates but how its clients get from arriving here to then needing a family doctor and care. The centre needed to understand how the family medicine structure works. What are some of the barriers we (doctors) face and how do our clinics operate? That’s really how the whole project was born.”

With some funding provided by the Greater Peterborough Health Services Foundation, the Peterborough Newcomer Health Clinic also relies on in-kind donations. Besides the clinic space, the Peterborough Family Health Team has provided medical supplies, while the New Canadians Centre has lent administrative support and helped with office supplies as well as helped co-ordinate the services of interpreters.

For her part, Dr. Sundareswaran has provided nursing support as well as yet more medical supplies.

The clinic’s clients are referred by the New Canadians Centre — it is not a walk-in clinic. The first-year goal, says Dr. Sundareswaran, is to take on about 50 patients.

“It’s very much a pilot project,” she says, noting she is the clinic’s lone physician. “We’re a very small operation, partly because we’ve never done anything like this before, and because we want to be able to have ongoing evaluation, feedback, and development of our program at a manageable size.”

“I couldn’t do this without the New Canadians Centre. There are a lot of risks if you don’t allow the community to drive a project of this nature. I can have good ideas but I’m quite removed from the clients the centre sees on a regular basis. They are the frontline workers that tell me what the unique barriers and challenges are.”

Speaking to the health care-related challenges faced by immigrants and refugees, Dr. Sundareswaran notes they can be found in the many things those with access to health care often take for granted — “Things that we assume everybody knows.”

“A visit to your doctor (in Canada) is free, which is not the case in a lot of places,” Dr. Sundareswaran explains. “We have instances where people are unsure about what’s covered and what’s not, and aren’t seeking care because they’re unaware.”

“A family doctor is a critical person in helping you access what I call secondary care — specialists and tests and blood work. Again, that’s not the case everywhere. So there’s a lack of awareness around what services are available and how to access them.”

“The other thing that’s really different in Canada is when you go see your doctor, it’s not just ‘I’ve got this problem I need fixed.’ We also do a lot of preventative care. That requires quite a bit of advocacy on the part of patients. Again, if that education isn’t there, it’s can be quite challenging.”

Then there’s the language barrier on top of all that.

“We’re asking people to call doctor’s offices and make appointments which, if you don’t speak English, is really challenging. Then the doctor may need to relay results to you. Sure, we can arrange for an interpreter to come to a visit itself, but the interpreter isn’t by your side at all times if your doctor calls to say ‘Your blood work is abnormal and I need you to go do a test next week.'”

Moving forward, Dr. Sundareswaran says the “ideal scenario” is each clinic patient eventually secures a family doctor and is integrated in terms of his or her ability to access all health care services.

“There are a few important measures we’re going to be looking at over the next few months,” notes Dr. Sundareswaran. “Have clients received care? Have they had prescriptions refilled? Have we kept people out of the emergency department? Have we done the referrals that were necessary? Have we encouraged people to seek care? Have we done preventative care? Are we doing referrals to mental health services? Are we developing partnerships with other organizations that will strengthen this?”

“Those are things we’ll ask. The answers to those questions will shape how we develop the clinic in year two and year three.”

As she forges ahead, Dr. Sundareswaran is convinced she’s in the right place at the right time, with the decision to stay in Peterborough with her husband, Dr. Mathew Moore (also a family doctor), being a very good one.

“There were a lot of things we loved about living and working in Peterborough. There was a very welcoming medical community. There was an opportunity to take over a practice. We were familiar with the colleagues that we were going to work with and we felt really supported.”

Her work with the clinic, she adds, has been the icing on the cake.

“Sense of community is really, really important to me,” Dr. Sundareswaran says, adding the newcomer clinic “has provided that in its fullest form.”

“What I have felt in the last few weeks is one of the reasons I went into family medicine in the first place,” she explains, noting the clinic “is allowing me to marry the relationship between family medicine and the community that I am part of.”

If you see a group of emergency responders in the waters off the shore of Peterborough’s Little Lake during the week of February 13, don’t be alarmed.

Firefighters with Peterborough Fire Services are conducting their annual water and ice rescue training at Roger’s Cove in East City.

Designated as a Level 3 Water Rescue Response, Peterborough Fire Services can be called upon any time of the year for a water rescue along the Otonabee River and the Trent-Severn Waterway. They use three flat-bottom boats, throw ropes, swiftwater rescue gear, and cold water immersion suits.

The group of 10 firefighters includes captain and chief training officer Dave Gillespie, who told kawarthaNOW on Tuesday (February 14) they were training for their provincial certification. The group includes new recruits receiving first-time training.

Gillespie said the ice was still around four inches thick near the shore so they had to go some distance out to find thinner ice that could be broken for the training.

Despite the mild weather, he said the temperature of the water was around 3°C. For anyone immersed in the water who is not wearing protective gear, they can experience loss of dexterity in under three minutes and exhaustion or unconsciousness in 15 to 30 minutes.

Signs are posted on the paths at Roger’s Cove to tell passersby the fire department is conducting operational training.

Gillespie (who wears a white helmet) said he is happy to answer any questions members of the public may have about the training.

This story has been updated to clarify the training will take place all week.

Peterborough city council has approved significant changes to residential waste collection in the city beginning this fall: the use of clear garbage bags for residential waste collection and switching to every-other-week residential garbage collection starting October 31 — coinciding with the introduction of a weekly ‘green bin’ service to collect household organic waste.

City council approved the waste management service changes at its meeting on Monday night (February 27), following general committee approval two weeks ago.

These changes do not effect the existing recycling collection program, which will continue to be provided on a weekly basis. In addition, the Downtown Business Improvement Area, apartment buildings, and private road serviced developments are not affected by the waste management service changes.

The requirement for clear garbage bags is intended to encourage residents in complying with the city’s recycling and organic waste separation guidelines. The city has identified eight to 10 per cent of material thrown out as garbage could be recycled.

The use of clear garbage bags in other municipalities — including all eight townships in the County of Peterborough — has resulted in significantly fewer recyclable items going to landfill. It also improves worker safety by allowing transfer station staff to quickly assess whether there are recyclable or hazardous items in a bag.

Only clear garbage bags will be collected curbside as of October 31. Although people can switch to using clear bags at any time, the city is encouraging residents to use up their supply of existing opaque garbage bags before the change to clear garbage bags is in effect.

All waste items must be placed directly in the clear bags, with the exception of one smaller opaque ‘privacy bag’ within each clear bag to contain items that residents want to shield from view such as sanitary products or shredded financial information. If organic waste or recyclable material is visible in the clear plastic bags, collectors will use “tolerance” and the bags may still be collected.

Along with the requirement for clear garbage bags, the city will begin collecting residential garbage only every other week beginning October 31, when the new weekly green bin service to collect household organic waste begins.

The city says weekly garbage collection will no longer be necessary after the weekly green bin collection service is introduced. According to a city study, household organic waste is the largest single component of material going to the landfill, making up 41 per cent of residential garbage.

Every-other-week garbage collection is common in Ontario communities that have green bin programs, including Barrie, Durham, Guelph, Niagara Region, Ottawa, Peel, Simcoe County, Toronto, and Waterloo.

The city expects it will increase the number of garbage bags that each household can put out for collection every other week from the current limit of two bags to a new limit of four bags.

For the new green bin program, the city will provide — at no cost to residents — both smaller green bins for kitchen countertops and larger green bins for curbside collection. Kitchen and food waste, as well as pet waste, can be placed in the green bin for curbside collection, which is a heavy-duty and pest-proof cart with a locking mechanism on the lid.

Delivery of green bins will begin in September and is expected to be completed by mid-October, with weekly curbside green bin collection beginning on October 31.

The city will be providing public education and awareness information to residents about the waste management service changes well before they go into effect on October 31. This includes information shared through local media, informational material that will distributed along with green bins starting in September, and a “what’s in and what’s out” information sheet that details what organic waste can go in the green bin.

The city will also provide eligible households with a waste management calendar including a map illustrating collection zones and clearly marked collection dates for each zone.

For more information about the proposed changes to garbage collection, visit peterborough.ca/reducewaste.

A report will be brought to council at a future date to amend the city’s waste collection enforcement by-law to include new definitions of the waste stream, collection requirements, and penalties for non-compliance as an option if public education efforts are not effective in changing waste disposal behaviours.

In addition to the proposed changes to garbage collection, council approved an update on the transition of Ontario’s residential blue box recycling collection and processing program from a municipally administered system to a producer-administered system effective January 1, 2024.

Under the new system, producers of packaging and paper products become fully responsible for the blue box program. A producer-controlled non-profit organization called Circular Materials Ontario will have responsibility for operating the collection and receiving of blue box materials across Ontario on behalf of all producers.

This story has been updated with city council’s approval of the waste management master plan and additional details of the changes.

The Kinmount area will soon have a new family doctor.

Kinmount District Health Services Foundation has announced Dr. Lesslie Ponraja will be joining the healthcare team at the Kinmount and District Health Centre (KDHC).

Dr. Ponraja comes from Ashford in England, where he has practised medicine for 20 years, including 15 years as a family doctor and five years in a hospital.

“I am extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Lesslie Ponraja to the Kinmount and District Health Centre,” says Dr. Elena Mihu, who was the first physician to set up a practice at KDHC when the centre opened in 1999. “With his vast experience and friendly, supportive manner, he is a most welcome addition to the KDHC healthcare team.”

Dr. Ponraja, who is married with two young children, invites patients to address him as ‘Doctor Lesslie’. He will join Dr. Mihu in seeing existing patients at KDHC from Monday to Thursday beginning Wednesday, March 1.

Neither doctor will be accepting new patients at this time. Dr. Mihu has been caring for a large number of patients for several years and will initially be sharing her practice with Dr. Ponraja while she prepares for retirement after almost 25 years.

The transfer of her entire patient roster to Dr. Ponraja will take place over the next few months.

Located in the village of Kinmount bordering the City of Kawartha Lakes, Peterborough County, and Haliburton County, KDHC services a large catchment area of over 5,000 permanent residents as well as up to 8,000 seasonal residents.

One person is dead following a collision on Highway 7 just east of Peterborough on Tuesday morning (February 14).

At around 7:20 a.m., a westbound tractor-trailer and an eastbound sport utility vehicle (SUV) collided between Keene Road and Burnham Line.

The driver of the SUV was pronounced dead at the scene.

No other injuries have been reported.

Highway 7 will remain closed for several hours between Keene Road and Highway 28 while police document the scene.

Anyone who may have witnessed or has video/dash camera footage of the collision and who has not spoken with police is asked to contact the Peterborough County detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police at 1-888-310-1122.

Another piece of the puzzle to solving the ongoing opioid crisis is falling into place with a joint proposal from Four Counties Addiction Services Team (Fourcast) and the Canadian Mental Health Association, Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge (CMHA HKPR) to operate a new 12-bed residential detox and residential addiction treatment facility for substance users in the greater Kawarthas region.

The proposal was announced on Monday (February 13) at Showplace Performance Centre by Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith, who was joined by community health experts including Fourcast executive director Donna Rogers, CMHA HKPR executive director Mark Graham, Peterborough Medical Officer of Health Dr. Thomas Piggott, and Peterborough Regional Health Centre chief medical executive Dr. Lynn Mikula, along with Peterborough mayor Jeff Leal, Peterborough County warden Bonnie Clark, Peterborough police chief Stuart Betts, and Peterborough County-City Paramedics chief Randy Mellow.

Fourcast and CMHA HKPR are seeking $1.138 million in funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health to operate a facility at a yet-to-be-determined location with six detox beds and six treatment beds, on a pilot basis to demonstrate the effectiveness of the service model. The facility would primarily serve substance users in the city and county of Peterborough, the City of Kawartha Lakes, the counties of Northumberland and Haliburton, and Curve Lakes, Hiawatha, and Alderville First Nations.

According to MPP Smith, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Michael Tibollo reached out to Smith four weeks ago to advise him another community that had been approved for funding for a residential detox and treatment facility was unable to secure capital funding for their facility, and that the provincial funding would be available “if Peterborough could get a proposal together.”

“In an extremely short period of time, CMHA and Fourcast came together collaboratively to put together a proposal for six residential detox beds and six residential treatment beds, as a first start for this community for residential detox and treatment,” Smith said. “We’ve heard loud and clear this is something our community needs.”

Smith pointed out the provincial funding is not alone sufficient to fund the proposal. Another $300,000 would be needed to cover start-up costs, and partner agencies would need to raise the additional funding to demonstrate to the provincial government the community supports the proposed facility.

Fourcast executive director Donna Rogers said the addition of withdrawal management and adult residential treatment to Fourcast’s existing continuum of services would provide more supportive opportunities for those in our community who want to make changes to their substance use.

“People who struggle with substance abuse and addictions need many options to navigate their recovery journey,” Rogers said. “A collaborative partnership with CMHA has enabled us to submit a strong proposal for funding to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care that we hope is met with a favourable outcome.”

While Fourcast and the community partners have operated a Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) site at 220 Simcoe Street in downtown Peterborough since last June, that facility does not offer detox or addiction treatment services. It provides a safe and clean space for people to consume pre-obtained drugs, under the supervision of health professionals, and provides substance users with sterile consumption supplies, education on safer consumption practices, basic medical services, and referrals to drug treatment, housing, and other social services.

CMHA HKPR executive director Mark Graham said there is a significant need for residential detox and addiction treatment services, which currently do not exist in the greater Kawarthas region. The closet services are in the Oshawa area.

“We don’t have a specific site at this juncture to house 12 beds,” Graham said. “But if we get the funds, we look forward to seeking out the space for these 12 beds.”

According to data from Peterborough Public Health, 59 people died from drug poisoning in 2022 within Peterborough — an average of one person every week. In addition, 539 people visited the emergency department at Peterborough Regional Health Centre for drug poisoning and emergency medical services responded to 357 9-1-1 calls for opioid poisonings. In January 2023 alone, 10 people died from suspected drug poisonings — the deadliest month on record, according to Peterborough’s medical officer of health.

“Along with prevention, community well-being, and harm reduction, treatment is an important part of the urgent response needed to the crisis we are in here in Peterborough,” Dr. Piggott said. “Peterborough Public Health welcomes this proposal for more local treatment and detox services, and the opportunity it creates to strengthen our response to the drug poisoning crisis. Along with the Peterborough Drug Strategy partners we have been advocating for more tools to address the crisis for over a decade. If funded this will become a critical part of the local response.”

Peterborough Regional Health Centre chief medical executive Dr. Lynn Mikula, Peterborough police chief Stuart Betts, Peterborough County-City Paramedics chief Randy Mellow, Peterborough County warden Bonnie Clark, and Peterborough mayor Jeff Leal also spoke in support of the proposal.

“To make it very clear, this is not the finish line — we are just at the starter’s gate,” MPP Smith said. “We still have a long way to go. There are still a number of things our community needs to be more successful with this, but this is one step in the right direction, and we need to take this step now. I’m so grateful for all the hard work that has been done by everyone in the partnership on this.”

For the second time in the past three days, a snowmobiler has lost his life following a single snowmobile collision.

Just after midnight on Monday (February 13), members of the City of Kawartha Lakes detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and emergency services responded to a report of a single snowmobile collision on Four Mile Lake just east of Coboconk.

The snowmobile had crashed into a dock and the lone rider was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police have identified the victim as a 26-year-old Pickering man but have not released his name.

Police are continuing to investigate the collision.

On Friday night, a 37-year-old American man died after his snowmobile crashed into a tree on a trail in Haliburton County.