No matter how good they are, there's always a problem with wanderers. Many patients have Alzheimer's or other mental conditions, and some of them have a tendency to walk off when no-one is looking. Usually they just go into a different part of the hospital or are quickly found on the grounds, but sometimes they can really get going, showing up at the mall or a restaurant a few klicks away.

Since they expanded the unit recently, they decided to put a cement sidewalk connecting the two outside doors on the north side and surround it with a fence, to prevent any from wandering off that way. Not a bad idea in principle. They're almost finished building the fence, and here's what it looks like.

Seriously, an 8 foot high black fence of thick steel bars? That's what the residents of the north side get to see out their windows, or beside their patio? Were they worried that the wandering patients - almost all of which need something like a cane, walker or wheelchair just to get around - would manage to scale it and escape if it was only, say, 5 feet high? A picket fence would have got the job done, likely. Even a high fence less forboding and grim would have been a bit better. I actually find it an elegant commentary on our health care, whose overseers make decisions not remotely grounded in knowledge of the day to day operations at the local level.

The residents of Delta can at least rest assured that they won't meet a 95 year old woman with dementia and preternatural climbing skills at London Drugs. I'm sure that's a comfort to the many sharp-minded patients as they get to spend their remaining years gazing out from something that resembles the yard at a medium security prison. Unbelievable.