To the Editor,
I am sitting in a 100-plus-year-old house with no insulation in the walls. Because I have a brain injury and a brain tumour, I am on a low income from out of province. However, the income, while well below the poverty line for a single person, is too high in this province, so I don't qualify for most things.
This year I was unable to buy fuel or firewood. For two months I have been trying to get help to get firewood. In each and every instance I was refused or ignored. I don't qualify for help from the province because this year it isn't needs based, but based on dates.
Whatever kind of fuel you needed last year had to be bought between Jan. 1 and March 31. I have a receipt, but it's dated Dec. 12, so because of two weeks, it's no good.
What money I do get is not squandered on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. I am simply too poor now to make ends meet.
Thanks to the generosity of others, I now have some firewood. But what about others in similar situations?
Who waits until January to take care of their heating needs? Where has the common sense in the system gone? What about the people falling through the cracks?
Katherine McNeil, River Philip
