In yesterdays paper on the front page was a story about how a court had recently given a $900,000 settlement against a general practitioner who had "missed a heart attack".
According to the paper, the patient, a 45 year old smoker, arrived in the ER at a small country hospital clutching his chest, sweaty etc. He was, curiously, not however complaining of chest pain. The EKG was normal. The paper didn't say what blood work was done, or for that matter what bloodwork would have been available on a STAT basis in that hospital at that time of the day.
The GP examined the patient, asked the appropriate questions and admitted the patient to hospital overnight, asking the nurses to observe for any chest pain. The patient had no further chest pain overnight; however in the am, the cardiogram showed that sometime between admission to hospital and the morning, the patient had had an infarct which was now too late for thrombolyis, assuming it was available at that hospital.
The court presumbably acting on the testimony of experts found that this was negligent and assessed damages of $900K to the patient who is now a cardiac cripple. (Of course I would suspect in a smoker who has ischemic heart disease in the 40s it is merely a question of when he becomes a cardiac cripple, nothwithstanding the fact that the odd patient stops smoking, modifies his lifestyle and runs marathons.)
Here's where I started thinking there but for the grace of god....
I was in general practice for 3 years and did a great deal of call during that time. It was not unusual for patients to present with chest pain and a normal EKG. Depending on where you worked you could or could not get cardiac enzymes on a STAT basis. So if we were really suspicious we did what this poor GP did, we admitted them to hospital, asked the nurses to watch for chest pain, get a EKG if they had chest pain and we got an EKG in the morning. Now EKGs were usually sent out to be read by a cardiologist which meant that when you missed something, if you were lucky the cardiologist phoned you; usually you got a dictated report a week later. I know I sent at least one patient home with what proved to be an inferior MI, another patient had been transferred to a different hospital by the time I got the report.
Part of my anaesthetic training involved 6 months of internal medicine during which time I was on call for cardiology consults in the ER. I know for a fact that on at least one occasion the cardiologist and I sent a patient home with what proved to be a MI. There may have been other cases that we never found out about. On another occasion, we did just what the GP did; admitted the patient to the CCU for observation, did a EKG in the morning which showed a completed infarct that it was too late to do anything about. (Worse for me,this was the father of a staff anaesthesiologist who I really liked.)
Further, EKGs are notoriously hard to read. Inferior MIs can be missed easily, in addition anterior MIs frequently present with what we can "poor R wave progression" which unless you have an old EKG to compare it with you may miss. I remember as a resident standing in the ER with a very competent internist trying to figure out whether the EKG we were looking at showed poor R-wave progression in which case we needed to give a thrombolytic which is not an innocuous therapy. Fortunately we decided that was what he had, we gave the thrombolytic, he did well and cardiac cath did show a critical lesion.
Of course the other factor in this case was that the GP in question had been on call by himself for the previous 3 weeks and according to the paper, working from 0800 to 2100 (not including the innevitable night visits and phone calls).
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Friday, November 2, 2007
Anonimity
It is nice to know that somebody actually reads my blog as I got an email last month regarding my posts regarding RateMds.com. The emailer expressed some disbelief that an anaesthesiologist would even be rated on such a site as nobody really knows who their anaes is.
That is quite correct and in fact the posts of RateMds relate to my work in the chronic pain field.
Anaesthesiologists are two-faced about the anonomity that comes with the profession. On the one hand, the lack of sustained patient contact is a significant factor in drawing many of us to the specialty. At the same time we resent the lack of recognition we get for the miracles we daily perform in the OR, we get really upset when nurses on the floor announce "anaesthesia is here" rather than Dr. BH is here, when we read about the latest surgical miracle in the hospital which mentions every member of the team except the anaesthesiologist etc etc we get really pissed off.
When I was a GP in small towns, you were very visible and people got to know you after a while. You were occasionally stopped on the street and asked for advice. On the other hand, you couldn't throw temper tantrums about bad service and you had to be very careful about drinking in public.
I always remember how in one small town, I treated a small child for what I felt on examination was a URTI, so I prescribed the usual nostrums. The child did not get better as most URTIs don't in the short term so the mother took the child to another doctor who informed her ( as doctors unfortunately do), "this is is the worst case of pneumonia I've ever seen and this antibiotic will cure it". So the child was sent home on antibiotics and got better as most URTIs eventually do. I will not even discount the possibility that the URTI may have developed into pneumonia.
At any rate, I obviously never learned of this developement until a couple of days later I was eating lunch with my wife in a somewhat cozy restaurant and heard the entire story from the next table complete with a description of how stupid the new doctor was. The lady then got up, saw me and turned beet red.
When I went into anaesthesia somebody told me that it was a good idea to make post-operative rounds on your patients. I actually tried that. One day I located all the patients I had done the day before which involved phoning admitting to find their locations and tried to visit them. This was in addition to the number of pre-operative visits I had to do in those days before same day surgery. I went into each patient's room introduced myself as Dr. BH who had put them to sleep the day before and "how are things going". And I got a lot of blank "who the hell are you" stares. Needless to say I have never made post-op rounds since.
Anyway our licensing body a few years ago decided that we needed our competency and other issues examined. Therefore presumable at great expense (using our dues) a program of assessing our fitness as physicians was initiated. So about two-three years ago I received in the mail a number of surveys about my abilities and personality as a physician. I was supposed to name 10 other physicians to evaluate me as well as 10 non-physicians. I must say I had a little trouble finding 10 surgeons who weren't pissed off at me but I did find 10 names. The 10 non-physicians (nurses) was a little more difficult but I found 10 names.
What was really difficult was that I was given 30 questionnaires that I was supposed to give to patients. I had about a month to do this. Now at the time I was working at the centre of excellence and typically did about one long case a day usually on a patient having some type of horrendoplasty. I thought to my self, these patients are not about to be able to complete a questionnaire about my bedside manner plus I don't do thirty cases in a month. Now at that time I worked 1-2 days a month at a community hospital doing day surgery. So I phoned up the survey company and explained my dilemma. After some negotiation, I was given extra time and over 2 months I was able to get rid of the 30 questionnaires.
Not a single one was returned!
As one of my non-physicians I named on the orderlies that I had befriended. One day, he pulled me out of the hall and said "Hey are you in trouble, I just got this questionnaire about you". I assured him I wasn't in trouble yet.
That is quite correct and in fact the posts of RateMds relate to my work in the chronic pain field.
Anaesthesiologists are two-faced about the anonomity that comes with the profession. On the one hand, the lack of sustained patient contact is a significant factor in drawing many of us to the specialty. At the same time we resent the lack of recognition we get for the miracles we daily perform in the OR, we get really upset when nurses on the floor announce "anaesthesia is here" rather than Dr. BH is here, when we read about the latest surgical miracle in the hospital which mentions every member of the team except the anaesthesiologist etc etc we get really pissed off.
When I was a GP in small towns, you were very visible and people got to know you after a while. You were occasionally stopped on the street and asked for advice. On the other hand, you couldn't throw temper tantrums about bad service and you had to be very careful about drinking in public.
I always remember how in one small town, I treated a small child for what I felt on examination was a URTI, so I prescribed the usual nostrums. The child did not get better as most URTIs don't in the short term so the mother took the child to another doctor who informed her ( as doctors unfortunately do), "this is is the worst case of pneumonia I've ever seen and this antibiotic will cure it". So the child was sent home on antibiotics and got better as most URTIs eventually do. I will not even discount the possibility that the URTI may have developed into pneumonia.
At any rate, I obviously never learned of this developement until a couple of days later I was eating lunch with my wife in a somewhat cozy restaurant and heard the entire story from the next table complete with a description of how stupid the new doctor was. The lady then got up, saw me and turned beet red.
When I went into anaesthesia somebody told me that it was a good idea to make post-operative rounds on your patients. I actually tried that. One day I located all the patients I had done the day before which involved phoning admitting to find their locations and tried to visit them. This was in addition to the number of pre-operative visits I had to do in those days before same day surgery. I went into each patient's room introduced myself as Dr. BH who had put them to sleep the day before and "how are things going". And I got a lot of blank "who the hell are you" stares. Needless to say I have never made post-op rounds since.
Anyway our licensing body a few years ago decided that we needed our competency and other issues examined. Therefore presumable at great expense (using our dues) a program of assessing our fitness as physicians was initiated. So about two-three years ago I received in the mail a number of surveys about my abilities and personality as a physician. I was supposed to name 10 other physicians to evaluate me as well as 10 non-physicians. I must say I had a little trouble finding 10 surgeons who weren't pissed off at me but I did find 10 names. The 10 non-physicians (nurses) was a little more difficult but I found 10 names.
What was really difficult was that I was given 30 questionnaires that I was supposed to give to patients. I had about a month to do this. Now at the time I was working at the centre of excellence and typically did about one long case a day usually on a patient having some type of horrendoplasty. I thought to my self, these patients are not about to be able to complete a questionnaire about my bedside manner plus I don't do thirty cases in a month. Now at that time I worked 1-2 days a month at a community hospital doing day surgery. So I phoned up the survey company and explained my dilemma. After some negotiation, I was given extra time and over 2 months I was able to get rid of the 30 questionnaires.
Not a single one was returned!
As one of my non-physicians I named on the orderlies that I had befriended. One day, he pulled me out of the hall and said "Hey are you in trouble, I just got this questionnaire about you". I assured him I wasn't in trouble yet.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Operating on no sleep
We in anaesthesia do not work after being on call. This has always been a topic of derision among our surgical colleagues.
I was having supper with the former OR director at my former hospital a few months ago. The OR director is the poor sucker who is responsible for the smooth running of the operating room. This poor individual tried to do his best for over a year frustrated by the OR administration who wouldn't take his advice and his own Department who wouldn't back him up so he quit and went back to just being an ordinary anaesthesiologist and we went without an OR director for over a year until we found someone stupid or optimistic enought to do the job.
Anyway my former hospital does a lot of transplants. For various reasons most of these occur at night. There are reasons for this. You have some poor soul in ICU who is beyond hope. At morning rounds the decision is made to abandon life support and think about organ donation. By the time all the necessary tests have been done to establish brain death and all the relative have had their last visit, most of the day has passed and we are in to evening which is when the "harvest" starts. This means that the liver, heart and lung transplants don't start until close to or after midnight.
This of course means that if we can potentially have 1 heart transplant, 2 lungs and a liver all going on at the same time. That means that 4 sub-specialist anaes are working all night. These services are not staffed so that the anaes. is off post-call, however most individuals have no interest in working the next day. Therefore however is the OR coordinator is supposed to find 4 anaes to fill in the next day. Although there are a number of part-timers who can be called on, this can be a problem. After such nights there is usually a massive shuffling of lists which is annoying to those POAs in the department.
Surgeons however, like the alcoholic who believes he is witty and sexually attractive when drunk, still believe they can operate competently on no sleep.
My colleague was faced with this problem one morning of trying to find anaes. to work. He looked at the list and saw that one of the cardiac surgeons scheduled to work that day was also one of the individuals who worked all night. He spoke with the individual, a paediatric cardiac surgeon, who assured him that he intended to do his elective list, even though he had worked all night. So my colleague shuffled rooms and cajoled people and the surgeon was able to do his list.
The surgeon's elective case which was a paediatric patient and a re-do died on the table. My colleague still wonders whether he should have just cancelled the list.
I was having supper with the former OR director at my former hospital a few months ago. The OR director is the poor sucker who is responsible for the smooth running of the operating room. This poor individual tried to do his best for over a year frustrated by the OR administration who wouldn't take his advice and his own Department who wouldn't back him up so he quit and went back to just being an ordinary anaesthesiologist and we went without an OR director for over a year until we found someone stupid or optimistic enought to do the job.
Anyway my former hospital does a lot of transplants. For various reasons most of these occur at night. There are reasons for this. You have some poor soul in ICU who is beyond hope. At morning rounds the decision is made to abandon life support and think about organ donation. By the time all the necessary tests have been done to establish brain death and all the relative have had their last visit, most of the day has passed and we are in to evening which is when the "harvest" starts. This means that the liver, heart and lung transplants don't start until close to or after midnight.
This of course means that if we can potentially have 1 heart transplant, 2 lungs and a liver all going on at the same time. That means that 4 sub-specialist anaes are working all night. These services are not staffed so that the anaes. is off post-call, however most individuals have no interest in working the next day. Therefore however is the OR coordinator is supposed to find 4 anaes to fill in the next day. Although there are a number of part-timers who can be called on, this can be a problem. After such nights there is usually a massive shuffling of lists which is annoying to those POAs in the department.
Surgeons however, like the alcoholic who believes he is witty and sexually attractive when drunk, still believe they can operate competently on no sleep.
My colleague was faced with this problem one morning of trying to find anaes. to work. He looked at the list and saw that one of the cardiac surgeons scheduled to work that day was also one of the individuals who worked all night. He spoke with the individual, a paediatric cardiac surgeon, who assured him that he intended to do his elective list, even though he had worked all night. So my colleague shuffled rooms and cajoled people and the surgeon was able to do his list.
The surgeon's elective case which was a paediatric patient and a re-do died on the table. My colleague still wonders whether he should have just cancelled the list.
The Stalker
I heard this story second hand when I worked at the CofE and have heard at least 2 versions but something like this actually happened.
Several years ago a young man approached one of the cardiac surgeons, telling him that he was a student at one of technical colleges and could he watch some cardiac surgery. The surgeon was of course only too happy to have somebody witness his genius and so the young man was welcomed into the OR to watch cardiac surgery. After he had been there for a couple of weeks people got used to him being around and he started to drift into other rooms to watch other types of surgery. At that time and even after it nobody was required to wear ID in the OR or anywhere in hospital for that matter. The odd memo came out about wearing ID but nobody ever paid attention.
One day he showed up in a non-cardiac room and introduced himself to the anaesthetist and watched the surgery on a female patient including the insertion of the foley catheter at the beginning. (Female patients are positioned for foley catheter insertion in a Penthouse pose) At the end of the case he walked back to the recovery room with the anaesthetist. Shortly after arrival in the RR the patient opened her eyes, saw the young man and started screaming uncontrollably.
Turns out he had been stalking her, had learned she was having surgery and had weaseled his way into OR where in addition to watching surgery enabled him to view the daily OR slate with patient names on it.
I can only speculate how much the CofE paid out on this case.
Several years ago a young man approached one of the cardiac surgeons, telling him that he was a student at one of technical colleges and could he watch some cardiac surgery. The surgeon was of course only too happy to have somebody witness his genius and so the young man was welcomed into the OR to watch cardiac surgery. After he had been there for a couple of weeks people got used to him being around and he started to drift into other rooms to watch other types of surgery. At that time and even after it nobody was required to wear ID in the OR or anywhere in hospital for that matter. The odd memo came out about wearing ID but nobody ever paid attention.
One day he showed up in a non-cardiac room and introduced himself to the anaesthetist and watched the surgery on a female patient including the insertion of the foley catheter at the beginning. (Female patients are positioned for foley catheter insertion in a Penthouse pose) At the end of the case he walked back to the recovery room with the anaesthetist. Shortly after arrival in the RR the patient opened her eyes, saw the young man and started screaming uncontrollably.
Turns out he had been stalking her, had learned she was having surgery and had weaseled his way into OR where in addition to watching surgery enabled him to view the daily OR slate with patient names on it.
I can only speculate how much the CofE paid out on this case.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
More on Folk Festivals
Despite the corruption at the Edmonton Folk Festival that I wrote about, I actually like them. I usually attend the Canmore Folk Festival followed by the Edmonton Folk Festival the following weekend. I do have a few suggestions for performers and organizers.
Performers:
We came to see you because of the type of music we have heard you play over the years. If you are a Celtic performer, we want to hear you play Celtic music. We really aren't interested in your excursions into hip-hop or modern jazz. I know playing the same music over and over again for years can be boring but Mick Jagger seems to have done okay playing "Satisfaction". I am kind of bored doing the same thing everyday but it pays the bills and enables me to afford to go to folk festivals.
Also most of us really don't want to sing along. Please don't try to get us to. At the Canmore Folk Festival one of the acts tried for about 5 minutes to get the crowd to sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The same applies to standing up, waving our arms etc.
When at workshops don't be a prima donna with the sound. I always remember how Taj Mahal came to a workshop and just plugged in his guitar and went on. It seems the lesser known or talented an artist is, the more time they spend getting their sound just perfect.
Organizers:
I don't mind you making rules but if you do please enforce them. If for example you tell people not to line up before 0700 and they do; please do some thing about it.
At the same time some of your volunteers take the fact that they are volunteers as an excuse to act like Nazis. Folk festivals are not possible without volunteers, they also won't go far without paying customers.
Remember many of your customers do not have a very good view of the stage. Keep this in mind when you book someone where dancing is an important part of their act.
Performers:
We came to see you because of the type of music we have heard you play over the years. If you are a Celtic performer, we want to hear you play Celtic music. We really aren't interested in your excursions into hip-hop or modern jazz. I know playing the same music over and over again for years can be boring but Mick Jagger seems to have done okay playing "Satisfaction". I am kind of bored doing the same thing everyday but it pays the bills and enables me to afford to go to folk festivals.
Also most of us really don't want to sing along. Please don't try to get us to. At the Canmore Folk Festival one of the acts tried for about 5 minutes to get the crowd to sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The same applies to standing up, waving our arms etc.
When at workshops don't be a prima donna with the sound. I always remember how Taj Mahal came to a workshop and just plugged in his guitar and went on. It seems the lesser known or talented an artist is, the more time they spend getting their sound just perfect.
Organizers:
I don't mind you making rules but if you do please enforce them. If for example you tell people not to line up before 0700 and they do; please do some thing about it.
At the same time some of your volunteers take the fact that they are volunteers as an excuse to act like Nazis. Folk festivals are not possible without volunteers, they also won't go far without paying customers.
Remember many of your customers do not have a very good view of the stage. Keep this in mind when you book someone where dancing is an important part of their act.
Things that piss me off: drive thru's
I probably drink too much coffee and lately seem to prefer to buy coffee rather than make it myself. I also have developed a taste for lattes even though I used to sneer at people who made me wait for my ordinary coffee while the barista prepared their latte. (I suppose being Bleeding Heart after all it was innevitable that I develop a taste for latte's)
Patience is not one of my strong suits.
It bugs the hell out of me when I park my car and walk into Starbucks, Second Cup or Tim's and have to stand and be ignorred while the staff services a long line of drive-thru cars. Tim Hortons even has posted time standards for the drive thru which are a hell of a lot shorter than the time it takes me to get served.
What are two of our biggest problems: global warming and obesity. So we let people sit in their SUV's idling for several minutes while they pick up their triple-triple and a donut. Meanwhile I am trying to do my small part for the environment and myself by parking my car or even walking to the coffee place and I have to wait.
Coffee places: be warned. I have had enough. Close your drive thru's or I will do something drastic. Like make my own coffee.
Patience is not one of my strong suits.
It bugs the hell out of me when I park my car and walk into Starbucks, Second Cup or Tim's and have to stand and be ignorred while the staff services a long line of drive-thru cars. Tim Hortons even has posted time standards for the drive thru which are a hell of a lot shorter than the time it takes me to get served.
What are two of our biggest problems: global warming and obesity. So we let people sit in their SUV's idling for several minutes while they pick up their triple-triple and a donut. Meanwhile I am trying to do my small part for the environment and myself by parking my car or even walking to the coffee place and I have to wait.
Coffee places: be warned. I have had enough. Close your drive thru's or I will do something drastic. Like make my own coffee.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Corruption at the Edmonton Folk Festival
It is hard to think of an institution more pure than the Edmonton Folk Festival. An institution verging at times as holier than thou. Run by volunteers, with real plates to reduce garbage, healthy ethnic foods, thousands of people co-existing peacefully for 4 days with no cops on site.
A couple of years ago I decided to go in the tarp run. This is an EFF tradition. For those readers who don't know Edmonton, the Folk Festival is held on what in Edmonton passes as a ski hill. The stage is at the bottom. People place tarps to hold their places. This is on a first come first served basis. If you come early you are in the first row, if you come later you are much higher up the hill, it seems about a mile away and several thousand feet above the stage. This is not a problem as the music is amplified and there are video screens half way up but going up and down the hill several times a day can be quite tiring.
In years past people lined up overnight to get a good spot. When the gates opened there would be a mad dash from the two entrances to grab a good spot of land. This was even more interesting as one of the gates is at the top of the hill. This culminated a few years ago in somebody running over a festival volunteer and breaking her leg. Because of this and because I think the neighbours really didn't like people sleeping overnight in their neighbour hood, the festival instituted a raffle system.
Now for the Saturday and Sunday shows, you line up at 7 am and are admitted to the compound where you are given a "colour" with a number. Each colour is a group and the number is where you line up in the group. The colours have funny names like "Red red wine" and "Mellow Yellow" (I'm not sure whether they have a "whiter shade of pale"; they should.) At about 8 am, the colours are called out randomly and if your colour is called first, your group gets to walk to the front of the stage and place your tarp (Actually you put your stuff in line in another holding pen and come back after 0900 to start the "tarp run".)
So a couple of years ago I woke up around 0630 and decided, why not go in the tarp run today? So I rode my bike down to the site. The festival asks you not to line up before 7 am so I was careful to time my arrival for 7:01. That was pretty stupid because the line-up was already about 100 metres long by that time (and like most Canadian line-ups it was growing from the centre as people let their friends join them in the line-up!). I did get into the compound however (only 300 people get in at each entrance). The volunteer at the gate looked me over and selected a coloured tag from the sheaf of tags she was carrying. The compound was an area sectioned off by a portable fence like you see around construction sites. It was cage like and about 300 people were penned up like cattle inside this area. This was compound by the fact that many people were carrying seats, and supplies for the festival. In Edmonton in August you have to have clothes for 3 seasons plus rain gear.
At 8:00 I was expecting the colours to be drawn out of a drum. However the head volunteer opened an envelope with a printed sheet of the order of colours. Hmmm I thought, I wonder how many people know which colours are going to be drawn early and are they involved in passing out the colours.
Now I soon realized that people will find a way to make any fair system unfair. You would think that for each tarp, one person would show up. It doesn't work that way. Typically 8 people would show up for each tarp and get 8 different colours, almost ensuring that at least one would be drawn early. 1 person I found out, gets 25 friends to show up and get 25 colours. (I don't have 25 friends, let alone 25 who would show up before 7 am on a weekend). This is a minor annoyance however. It does mean that less than 300 people get to participate in the tarp run because 8-25 people show up and only one of them actually gets in line.
The next year I noticed that the same two people got in the first group both days. These were not people who came in large groups. Hmmm I says, I wonder if one of their friends is a volunteer who knew what colour was going to be called first.
Anyway I didn't go in the tarp run this year. But I was talking to a friend who goes in every year who told me that yes in fact the volunteers know exactly which colours are going to be drawn first, and they give them to their friends or to people who smile at them the right way (I have trouble smiling until well after 9 am). The festival is such a sacred institution that like the Catholic Church in old times, no one wants to expose this. (Until now).
It just shows that even pure events like the Edmonton Folk Festival can be corrupted and what lengths people will go to make a fair process unfair. The other observation I have made about tarps, is that the closer to the stage they are, the less likely they are to be occupied during any of the main stage acts. I will be sleeping in and climbing the hill just like old times.
A couple of years ago I decided to go in the tarp run. This is an EFF tradition. For those readers who don't know Edmonton, the Folk Festival is held on what in Edmonton passes as a ski hill. The stage is at the bottom. People place tarps to hold their places. This is on a first come first served basis. If you come early you are in the first row, if you come later you are much higher up the hill, it seems about a mile away and several thousand feet above the stage. This is not a problem as the music is amplified and there are video screens half way up but going up and down the hill several times a day can be quite tiring.
In years past people lined up overnight to get a good spot. When the gates opened there would be a mad dash from the two entrances to grab a good spot of land. This was even more interesting as one of the gates is at the top of the hill. This culminated a few years ago in somebody running over a festival volunteer and breaking her leg. Because of this and because I think the neighbours really didn't like people sleeping overnight in their neighbour hood, the festival instituted a raffle system.
Now for the Saturday and Sunday shows, you line up at 7 am and are admitted to the compound where you are given a "colour" with a number. Each colour is a group and the number is where you line up in the group. The colours have funny names like "Red red wine" and "Mellow Yellow" (I'm not sure whether they have a "whiter shade of pale"; they should.) At about 8 am, the colours are called out randomly and if your colour is called first, your group gets to walk to the front of the stage and place your tarp (Actually you put your stuff in line in another holding pen and come back after 0900 to start the "tarp run".)
So a couple of years ago I woke up around 0630 and decided, why not go in the tarp run today? So I rode my bike down to the site. The festival asks you not to line up before 7 am so I was careful to time my arrival for 7:01. That was pretty stupid because the line-up was already about 100 metres long by that time (and like most Canadian line-ups it was growing from the centre as people let their friends join them in the line-up!). I did get into the compound however (only 300 people get in at each entrance). The volunteer at the gate looked me over and selected a coloured tag from the sheaf of tags she was carrying. The compound was an area sectioned off by a portable fence like you see around construction sites. It was cage like and about 300 people were penned up like cattle inside this area. This was compound by the fact that many people were carrying seats, and supplies for the festival. In Edmonton in August you have to have clothes for 3 seasons plus rain gear.
At 8:00 I was expecting the colours to be drawn out of a drum. However the head volunteer opened an envelope with a printed sheet of the order of colours. Hmmm I thought, I wonder how many people know which colours are going to be drawn early and are they involved in passing out the colours.
Now I soon realized that people will find a way to make any fair system unfair. You would think that for each tarp, one person would show up. It doesn't work that way. Typically 8 people would show up for each tarp and get 8 different colours, almost ensuring that at least one would be drawn early. 1 person I found out, gets 25 friends to show up and get 25 colours. (I don't have 25 friends, let alone 25 who would show up before 7 am on a weekend). This is a minor annoyance however. It does mean that less than 300 people get to participate in the tarp run because 8-25 people show up and only one of them actually gets in line.
The next year I noticed that the same two people got in the first group both days. These were not people who came in large groups. Hmmm I says, I wonder if one of their friends is a volunteer who knew what colour was going to be called first.
Anyway I didn't go in the tarp run this year. But I was talking to a friend who goes in every year who told me that yes in fact the volunteers know exactly which colours are going to be drawn first, and they give them to their friends or to people who smile at them the right way (I have trouble smiling until well after 9 am). The festival is such a sacred institution that like the Catholic Church in old times, no one wants to expose this. (Until now).
It just shows that even pure events like the Edmonton Folk Festival can be corrupted and what lengths people will go to make a fair process unfair. The other observation I have made about tarps, is that the closer to the stage they are, the less likely they are to be occupied during any of the main stage acts. I will be sleeping in and climbing the hill just like old times.
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