Capital Daily for Sunday, July 12

Picket lines went up at Victoria General Hospital at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, the first of three Greater Victoria sites the BC Nurses' Union is targeting this week. Nanaimo Regional General follows Monday, and Royal Jubilee plus the South Island Surgical Centre come Tuesday.

If you have an appointment at VGH, check before you go. Island Health says the hospital's lab is open Sunday morning only, from 7 a.m. to noon, and every lab appointment booked after noon has been cancelled. Some surgeries are postponed, medical imaging may be delayed, and affected patients are being contacted by their care teams. Emergency and cancer care stay open.

The timing is pointed. The province appointed veteran mediators Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers on Friday to work with both sides for 10 days. Union president Adriane Gear says the pickets go ahead anyway, and that nurses learned of the mediator announcement through a government press release rather than a phone call.

Gear says the escalation is partly about how striking nurses are being treated. Since July 2, the union says it has logged more than 2,300 reports from members alleging intimidation, coercion and threats for refusing non-nursing duties.

AJ Cruze and Mira Laurence did their final Ocean 98.5 show Thursday morning. They were told during their last hour on air to come to a meeting once they'd signed off. That's where they learned the morning show they'd hosted from 6 a.m. for years no longer had a place for them.

They were two of the 230 people Rogers Sports and Media cut this week, part of a sweep that also closed six radio stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax and Kitchener. By Friday morning the Fort Street station was still broadcasting music, just without anyone talking over it. Calls to the studio got busy signals.

The layoffs landed one day after Rogers finished its $4.35-billion purchase of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. Unifor national president Lana Payne said that timing "speaks volumes about the company's priorities."

A Change.org petition asking Rogers to bring the pair back went up almost immediately. "They are not just voices on the radio; they are part of our daily lives, like friends we look forward to catching up with each day," it reads.