Controversy in Delta

Here where I live in Delta, British Columbia, substantial controversy rages around the local hospice. One member of the Take Back Delta Hospice Discussion group on Facebook received a deeply troubling message containing startling misinformation implying that the simple requirement for the hospice to respect patient choice is actually compulsion on the hospice to impose upon its patients. This got sent sent to this organization's members all across Canada:

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I simply had to clear a few things up with this Mr. Gunnarson by writing him as follows:

Dear Mr. Gunnarson,

I must respectfully urge you to withdraw the letter apparently circulated by you to your members urging nonresidents of Delta to interfere in a local Delta community issue that is unequivocally none of their business by taking out memberships in the Delta Hospice Society. Please remind your members who do not reside in Delta that, unless they intend to relocate to Delta within coming months, taking membership in this local community society is completely inappropriate.

The Delta Hospice Society is a strongly supported and much loved local community society that provides hospice services to residents who are already dying, to ease and give comfort at the end of life in the manner the dying may, by their own self-initiated choice, desire. A little over ten years ago, Delta residents from all walks of life and faith persuasions gave their enthusiastic financial support to build the Irene Thomas Hospice and the Harold & Veronica Savage Centre for Supportive Care. Membership in the Delta Hospice Society was and long remained very small, with supportive Delta residents leaving the business of the society to those few members and their elected Board of Directors. This is typical of most such service societies, the actual membership is far smaller than the supportive community within which they serve. Whether holding membership or not, residents of Delta most certainly regard the Delta Hospice Society as their community society.

Unfortunately, being a small community society with a limited membership, the Delta Hospice Society was readily susceptible to membership manipulation. In 2019, a hostile element stacked the society membership with people who supported its agenda, including people resident outside of the Delta community and, to the dismay of long standing members and the community as whole, ousted the existing Board of Directors and replaced it with their own Board of Director at the society’s 2019 Annual General Meeting last November. This new Board of Directors continued to stack society membership with residents remote from Delta for whom the operations of the society are completely none of their business, even going so far as to recruit in the United States of America. Delta residents who truly cared about the society they considered to be their own found this turn of events alarming and started taking out their own society memberships only to find that their membership applications were refused and returned to them while the applications of outsiders were being accepted.

The new Board of Directors then developed a plan to completely change the Constitution and Bylaws of the Delta Hospice Society and transform it from a secular community society into a parochial self-defined “Christian” (quotation marks for so-called because there are deeply faithful Christian residents of Delta who cannot recognize their actions as truly Christian) society. They planned a Special General meeting to authorize this change for last spring.

Needless to say Delta residents, out of our love for our community society as it had existed for so many years, quickly grew alarmed, initiated a campaign to take back the Delta Hospice Society by bringing the many resident supporters of and donors to society into membership, and took the matter of the refused memberships to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The court ruled to require all membership applications be accepted, to require membership lists be made available to the complainants, and to cancel the scheduled Special General Meeting. The new Board of Directors sought to appeal this ruling and the court ordered membership lists and applications sealed pending that appeal while keeping the cancellation on the Special Genela Meeting. The board's eventual appeal to the Appeal Court of British Columbia failed and the board was then required to accept the many resident membership applications. The board then sought a stay on the ruling while it attempted to take tho matter to the Supreme Court of Canada but the appeal court, recognizing that the Supreme Court of Canada would very likely decline to hear their case, refused the stay.

Now, under court order, the Board of Directors of the Delta Hospice Society is finally accepting the many local resident membernship applications. It would appear that this boardt is also upping its campaign to recruit outsiders to counter local residents, as evidenced by your letter. This matter is not the business of any nonresident of Delta. Please leave Delta residents to care for their community society without your interference.

Thank you for your attention,