Health spinoff from Saltscapes delivers some valuable advice

Living Healthy is an interesting cooperative venture between Saltscapes magazine of Halifax and the QEII Foundation, situated somewhere in a zone between an editorial supplement and a contract publication, but providing some valuable health information.

The second, annual issue of the publication is polybagged with the September/October issue of Saltscapes and is an indication of what a determined publisher can do to connect to the community.

I particularly liked the note at the front by managing editor Jan Matthews (who is also the home and cottage editor of Saltscapes) acknowledging that they had to be careful about "white coat syndrome" scaring away readers the way it scares away patients. And, though such information may have escaped me elsewhere, I also thought the two-page article about how triage is done and why you are made to wait in an emergency department was not only some plain speaking but also valuable education. It should probably be published as a brochure and handed out in emergency departments across the land.

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By the way, the main issue of Saltscapes has a feature on how the small New Brunswick community of Tabusintac on the Acadian peninsula of New Brunswick, is coping with the fame is has had brought to it by the publication of The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Chatelaine columnist and former Homemaker's magazine editor Sally Armstrong. (Armstrong is Taylor's great, great, great granddaughter)