Revised Lotto’s

C M Y K A2

A2 ■ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2011 ■ THE LONDON FREE PRESS

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n VOLUNTEERING: The London Consistory Club refurbishes and lends — for free — used medical devices

For decades, club has quietly filled gap for people with disabilities
B ob Molnar is
power-washing a walker.
Ron Brewe is scraping labels
off a partially-assembled
wheelchair. Near the front
door, John MacLeod is showing
fully-functional wheelchairs to a
customer, while Stuart Strain is
flipping through a binder filled
with inventory notes.
“There’s always something to
do,” says Brewe.
It’s just another ordinary
Tuesday morning at the London
Consistory Club. But beneath
the routine, there’s something
extraordinary going on.
First of all, none of the items
in the inventory book — or
hanging from the walls or sitting
on the floor — bears a price tag.
That’s because everything is free.
And most of the club’s items
— including 395 bath seats, 111
bath stools, 268 commodes, 115
bed rails, 15 transfer boards, 204
bathtub grab bars, 17 intra-
venous poles, 411 raised toilet
seats, 855 wheelchairs, 1,016
solid walkers and 1,058 rolling
walkers — aren’t even here.
They’ve been loaned out — for
free.
And as a parade of people
pad in and out of the former
St. Andrew’s Memorial Church
building at 243 Wellington Rd.
(the club is open Tuesdays
and Thursdays from 9 a.m. till
noon), it’s apparent that this
little grassroots group is making
a big difference to thousands of
desperate Londoners.
“If we didn’t have this place, I
10 don’t know what we’d do,” says
Ian Gillespie
THE CITY
OPINION
Lynette Fehir, an occupational
therapist who has stopped in to
pick up a tub seat, toilet frame
and bed rails. “It’s a godsend.”
Founded in 1940 by local
Freemasons belonging to the
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry,
the London Consistory Club (the
name refers to a church council
or court) operated for decades
out of the basement of the
Kingsmill’s store on Dundas St.
For the past 10 years or so,
the club has bounced around
several sites in the city, but for
the past two years it has been
housed in this former church.
Its goal is simple: To clean,
fix and refurbish used medical
equipment, then lend it without
charge — but with the under-
standing it’ll be returned when
no longer required — to those
in need.
The club, which receives no
grants (although donations are
welcomed), is operated entirely
and funded mainly by local
Masonic volunteers.
While some of the medical
equipment is bought new, most
of the devices are donated —
often by individuals and nursing
homes after the previous user
has died.
And though largely unknown
to many Londoners, the London
available for some mobility aids,
many of her clients — particu-
larly those who temporarily
need an assistive device while
recuperating from an injury —
don’t qualify.
And the devices aren’t cheap.
Wheelchairs can cost up to
$5,000, walkers sell for $400 or
so, and even renting a rolling
walker costs about $35 a month.
“A lot of people fall through
the cracks,” says club president
John MacLeod. “We’ve had
people tell us they could rent a
rolling walker, or eat. Literally,
that’s the choice.”
Thanks to the Consistory
Club, it’s a choice that thousands
won’t be forced to make.
Ian Gillespie is the Free Press city
columnist.
ian.gillespie@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/IanatLFPress
London Consistory Club
For details, call 519-685-5972
MIKE HENSEN The London Free Press
MORE: See volunteers in action at
Bob Brewe, a volunteer at the London Consistory Club, carries a newly refurbished walker at the club’s the London Consistory Club; visit
building on Wellington Rd. on Tuesday. A group of volunteers takes mostly donated wheelchairs, walkers, lfpress.com/video later today.
crutches and other assistive devices, cleans them up, repairs them and then give them out free to those
who cannot afford them or need them for a short term.
Consistory Club is widely basis,” says Kathleen McQueen, service, a lot of people would be
patronized by the city’s physical an occupational therapist who in a terrible situation.”
and occupational therapists. has stopped in to pick up two McQueen explains that while MORE: Read Ian Gillespie’s blog at
“Therapists use it on a regular rolling walkers. “Without this some government funding is lfpress.com/blogs

20

30 in
An illustrative look at news and events
40 minutes

Man against machine

50

60
How does the
super-computer work?
70 Watson uses IBM’s "question-answering technology.”

80 A super computer named Watson is taking on the two best players in the history of the game show 1 Question
Jeopardy in the latest battle between brain matter and silicon power. More than 15 researchers worked
Watson receives a text version of the answer at the
90 for four years to program Watson, developing thousands of mathematical formulas that enable the same time it is read to the candidates.
computer to deconstruct language and assess the relationships between words. It’s a dramatic techno-
100 logical leap — Watson is more sophisticated than Deep Blue, the computer that defeated chess grand
master Gary Kasparov in 1997. 2 Research
As with the web, Watson launches its algorithms in
parallel among millions of stored documents. The
supercomputer has stored the equivalent of 200
million pages of content, or 1 million books.
We are at a Watson is not connected to the Internet.

point where the

capacity of the 3 Gathering evidence
Watson then uses its algorithms to find all
machines is possible associations between relevant
very close to words and phrases.
that of humans.”
David Ferrucci, IMB’s Watson team leader 4 Analysis
Watson assesses the relevance of each association
according to the frequency with which they appear
in its database.

5 Classification
Jeopardy is the ultimate quiz show on Watson favours answers with the widest
television, debuting in 1964. The game tests search results. It isolates the three most
probable response.
the skills of contestants on a variety of
topics, providing answers for which players
must supply the correct question.
WATSON
6 Evaluation
The computer checks possible responses and
determines the correct one based on probability.
“A system of systems” Watson does not respond until it reaches a sufficient
• 10 racks of IBM 750 servers, each level of certainty about a response.
the size of a refrigerator
• 15TB (15,000 GB) of RAM
• 2880 core processor operating
at 80 teraflops (80,000 billion
7 Response
operations per second) Watson takes three seconds to analyze a clue and
formulate a response.
A laptop would take more than two hours to perform
the same task!

8 Self-teaching
Based on responses, Watson remembers the best
algorithms and modifies parameters for future
research all by itself.

Sources : IBM, AFP, www.theinfoboom.com

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