Is this new sign going to help me get a family Doctor? Didn't think so.

Yes .... now you can go and talk to the president of UNBC as well as the Mayor of PG.

How much did this cost out of Northern Health's budget? I dont think this photo-op will help with doctors,nurses and front line staff, which Northern Health needs. Just another self congratulatory slap on the back for doing nothing!

You know what will help, get your family doctor and staffing.....HST.

Another senseless waste of taxpayer dollars!

Good luck with that Spoke!

At least the photographer could have used the right lense for the job. The new multi thousand dollar sign is crooked in the photo.

Great news, great sign! Since the role of the hospital has been expanded it definitely needed a proper sign to indicate its new mission!

Well done!

I think its great it is a university hospital. More funding.

Sooooo! I guess the old mission was to cure sick people and the new mission is to cure sick people and provide photo ops for useless politicians?

What a bunch of miserable people. And I'm not talking about the picture.

The sign is crooked?

Look closely at the lamp post to the left of the sign. It is crooked too.

Do the people look crooked to you as well?

I thought that 'crooked' comment was funny too. Good one gus...

I don't know what you mean MrPG .... :-)

I guess the name,"Prince George Glorified Walk-in Clinic" just wouldn't sound quite right. oh well.

LOL, geez Gus I thought a guy like you with your wealth of knowledge would instantly realize the use of the right lense on your camera can avoid the leaning tower of Pizza effect on normally plumb buildings and other stuctures including light posts.
But I suppose until you Google it you wouldn't know that fact of photography. Silly me for assuming.

No Gus niether the sign or the post are really crooked, the people on the other hand could be, but I couldn't say for sure.

Dragonmaster ....

I do not have to google too much about photography ... LOL ... if you only knew ..

However, let me point out to you that the people, the hospital sign the lamp post, as well as the trees in the distantce are all parallel to each other.

The thing that is crooked is the vertical banner to the left. The only way that can be fixed is to photoshop it by "grabbing" that sign and skewing it so that the vertical edges are parallel with the main sign.

No lens in the world will fix that unless you grind a special one for that particular purpose.

After the photograph has been digitally corrected, the last minor adjustment is to rotate it conterclockwise a couple of degrees or so, so that the edge of the picture is parallel with the other elements in the picture.

Any more questions, you can come over to my place and I'll show you how it is done. :-)

I really don't care how you adjust the lense or grind this or that,the only good picture of that sign,is if you stuck it where the sun doesn't shine,of one of the Liberal MLA's.I consider it a huge waste of health care dollars,which could be spent on the frontline.When my wife(just this past Thursday)has to spend the night sharing the lounge with another patient,I think this type of thing is total bullshit.

Another example of the people on this website being ultra negative. What's the big outrage.....a sign.....you guys make me laugh!!

Hospitals aren't going to be perfect, but I would have to admit that our hospital has come a long way from how it looked when I first moved to PG back in 1994. At least it's getting better. Can't we just be happy with that.

I think the reason for the photo op was because the name change is symbolic because it means the hospital changes it's focus to being a teaching hospital not just a regular hospital. Anytime you see an increase in the services being offered it's a good thing. Either we will get new funding or we will become more important in terms of what the Health Ministry spends it's money on at budget time.

So thank you for making our Hospital a University Hospital. I think it's another small step towards PG becoming a great place to live.

There are three kind of people in this world.
Those who make things happen.
Those who watch things happen
Those who don’t know what happened.

Does the sign read NORTHERN INTERIOR Health Unit because Northern Health is being absorbed by Interior Health?

yeah its a slow day in the PG news world. We can only comment on the plumbness of a sign. Get a life.

Sorry He spoke; I can't afford a life. I'm too busy paying for BS like this.

All people in this world are the same.

They all make things happen some time, someplace, for some people.

They all watch things happen, whether they made them happen or someone else made them happen.

They all don't know everything that happened.

-----------------------------
Don't take yourself too seriously Prince George. Remember, you are not really a Prince ........

I hope this picture has straightened out a few things .... no more complaining now!!!!

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?7fb3e4f88a.jpg

hmmm - this designation gets us more funding and possibly a change in perception to get people from the lower mainland to look at us as a place to relocate to. People like dragonmaster spend hours stressing over how the photo was taken... 'nuff said

MWK comment is good. So many negativity in the comments. The progress the University (and college), and the hospital has made in the last 10 years has contributed alot to the diversification of the local economy. During past lumber downturns, the city boarded up and acted like it was the end of the world. This time, the city kept going on succesfully. This is thanks to the hospital and University.

Just how much did the whole changeover cost the taxpayer and I just don't mean the sign? I mean everything associated with the name change.

hehehee!....good one gus!

Name changes can cost a significant amount of money if they are to be changed on everything very quickly. If it can happen slowly over time, as things having the name on it get replaced, and one can live with having "property of PGRH" stamped on physical items for 2, 5, 10+ years, then it can be accomplished for very little.
--------------------

Of course, as others have said, the most important part of the changes in the hospital is whether there have actually been improvements over time. The new parts of the facility are certainly nice looking. But then, so were the older parts as they were originally built. Give it 50 years or 30 years, and the part that is new now will also show its age.

I have a copy of a 1993 report titled "Prince George External Review of Health Services".

Those are the kind of pieces of information that are important to check whether things have improved over time or not. There were 113 key recommendations in that report with details around those recommendations provided.

So, has there been an improvement and what are the current emerging issues?

I have been a regular financial supporter of the Spirit of the North Health Care foundation for many many years and have been very aware of the many very important improvements to PGRH.

Give them a call or visit their website and you will get immediate information about the many improvements in the past and the one in the works.

I contribute on a monthly basis and hope that those who are unaware of the tremendous voluntary contributions for improvements made by the general public of the whole area will not only do some research but get motivated to join in.

The people getting their picture taken were sitting on a slope. Now do you take their picture on a slope, or do you allow the sign to become an optical illusion. How does a lens change that? Regardless, Wow! , some people didn’t have much to do on Saturday, or I fear most days.

I'm surprised you let the comments about the photograph "get to you" Ben.

I didn’t take the pictures, staff did, and you don’t mess with my staff, including you.

A picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa might have caused a riot!

Geeeez.

I didn't think it was possible, but it seems we've hit a new low for the comments section. Pathetic.

Nothing much to comment about. It's just a sign, after all. What's in a name? It's what happens inside the building that counts. Speaking about those who do, there are tons of people in there that do every day often without much appreciation.

How about a web cam at the parking garage construction? Having a hammerhead crane in PG is not that common a sight.

OK just great--we have a new sign. I have heart problems and right now I'm in Cost Rica and have been here for 3 weeks. The health care here is the same as Cuba -- no charge for anyone for anything and they don't make abig political issue out of a sign. Fact is; you're damn lucky if you can find a sign. Who cares about a big fancy sign?? Good things can happen without the humongus waste of taxpayers dollars. Whatever all you people say is good about this sign--you are wrong. Signs will not help my health nor any one elses. Our country has their priorities all swcrewed up. The Canadian tax money from tobacco alone could give every Canadian free health care, any necessary drugs and surgerys but our governments continue to spend it on political pensions and other stupidity. One that still sticks in my craw is olympics of any sort.

O.k., supertech, you got your gripes off your chest! Now I will get my main beef off mine:

We can't afford a new sign on a hospital which is now a teaching hospital???

But we can afford to spend billions of dollars (nobody knows how much it will be at the end of the day if it ever comes!) on the bottomless hole of Afghanistan???

Harper bought a billion dollars worth of old Leopard tanks (100) from the Netherlands for one billion dollars and he is spending another billion to bring the outdated electronics of those tanks up-to-date!!! About 30 billion has already been wasted on the foreign adventure in Afghanistan - and now Karzai threatens to join the Taliban...the same Taliban which we spend billions hunting down???

I want that money for our healthcare, dear Mister Harper!

Costa Rica does NOT maintain an army for quite a few years. Maybe the Costa Ricans know something that we should pick up on.
The money they don't spend on warfare they put into healthcare!

Maybe we should do the same! First things first! At home!

Have a nice vacation!

At least you and I have it right. Costa Rica hasn't had an army since 1948.

But we dont have poisonous frogs and killer monkees...

Hey this thread has gone completely off track, we might as well continue ;-)

Is there a track? Every been at a party, join in with 3 people when they are talking about a new restaurant, next move to talking about where to buy vegetables, then into having to drive to places all over hells half acre to get anything, and then the price of gas staying over 1.05 and then Afghanistan and oil pipelines .......

All that from discussing a restaurant.

Anyone ever get thrown out of a house because they did not stick with a topic?????

LOL
No track gus gus...only signposts!

Isn't Michael MCMILLAN the Chief OPERATING Officer?

Yes, he is mainly operating when he has an operating room available with enough tech support to help him. Do you know what rank he holds?

Gus, I hate to burst your professional photographic bubble, but before the invention of photoshop there were special lenses invented to take care of this "tilt"
issue and this did not include any special lense grinding. I will let you search for that information yourself. If the photog wasn't in possession of this type of lense they could lessen the tilting effect with the use of a different camera position. I'll let you discover that for your self as well. Although this fix has it's limits, it takes away from the rest of the photo.

As far as getting off the subject at hand, who cares?
I would suggest an open comments thread like the "Friday Free For All" be available all the time.