An update: Red tape, rogue cows and reversals

For those who have been lying awake at night wondering, a few updates on previous columns: • A year and a half ago, Hazel Braithwaite ran into a roadblock when renewing her driver’s licence.

The Oak Bay councillor’s renewal notice included an invitation to combine the licence with her health-care card in a new document, the high-tech B.C. Services Card.

Yet when she tried to accept the invitation, she couldn’t do so because the Hazel Braithwaite on her driver’s licence wasn’t an exact match to the Hazel Short Braithwaite on her CareCard. The latter included the maiden name that she took as a middle name when she got married in Alberta in 1985. It’s on her passport, her social insurance card. … Sorry, she was told, without proof of a legal name change, documents with conflicting names can’t be combined.

So the driver’s licence office sent her to B.C. Vital Statistics, which sent her to their Alberta counterpart, which sent her to the Alberta Queen’s Printer, which batted her back to Alberta Vital Statistics, which — after leaving her on hold for half an hour — said, sorry, it didn’t have the kind of documents B.C. wanted, leading Hazel to conclude the only way to set things right was to go for a legal name change, which meant a trip to B.C. Vital Statistics’ Fort Street office, which told her she needed a criminal record check, though when she went to the Oak Bay cop shop the police sent her to the Commissionaires on Cloverdale, who charged her $70 for a record check (including fingerprinting) before she headed back to B.C. Vital Statistics, where she forked over $154 to apply for a legal name change to Hazel Short Braithwaite (the name that had been on her passport and all her other documents for 31 years). Then, dizzy, she spun around like a top and tipped over.

Not really, but she was a little dazed. She was also, later, surprised by how common her story was. “After that article came out, I heard from so many people who said ‘The same thing happened to me,’ ” she said.

The Insurance Corp. of B.C.’s explanation was that using the proper “foundation name” — usually the one on your birth certificate, or your spouse’s surname if it’s adopted at marriage — is important in fighting identity theft.

OK, but that rigid application of red tape has consequences. This week, the news was full of stories of people with hyphenated married names tripping over the rules.

The Ministry of Citizens’ Services points out that you don’t have to combine your driver’s licence with your B.C. Services Card. You can still have two documents, with different names. Still, it seems nuts that that’s the only alternative to a time-consuming and expensive name change. • The Rogue Cow of Metchosin remains on the lam.

When the hoof-loose heifer hurdled the hedge hemming its Happy Valley Road home this spring, few expected it would be free for long.

But the ninja-black bovine has proven elusive, not only surviving but thriving in the West Shore wilderness. It periodically pops up in public, only to slip into the bush again before the Bossy posse arrives.

As was true with other famous fugitives — Robin Hood, Che Guevera, Bonnie and Clydesdale — the Rogue’s legend grows the longer it avoids cowpture. • Following a piece on pay parking at Vancouver Island hospitals, a reader noted that when he gave up on the Canadian system and went for hip surgery in Palm Springs, California, the hospital there offered free valet parking.

On the other hand, his new hip cost him an arm and a leg.

Meanwhile, students at North Island College’s Courtenay campus won’t have to pay to park after all. The college only implemented the charges this year out of fear that its lot would be filled by people dodging the pay parking at the neighbouring hospital, which opens Sunday. After the municipality pressured Island Health into dropping pay parking at the hospital, the college decided this week to reverse course, too. • When Ottawa announced the new offshore fisheries research ship replacing the Nanaimo-based W.E. Ricker (named after an eminent fisheries scientist) would be called the Sir John Franklin (named after an ill-fated Arctic explorer) many scientists were dismayed. Researchers argued the new vessel should be named for a successful Canadian scientist, not a British explorer whose name is synonymous with disaster.

That drew responses from several readers, including Ricker’s son Eric, a retired Dalhousie University professor. He expressed surprise that the federal Liberals would go along with the Harper government’s decision to, for the first time, name a fisheries vessel after a non-Canadian.

Alas for the scientists, their ideas were — like Franklin’s HMS Terror and HMS Erebus — sunk.

When the new vessel is launched from Seaspan’s North Vancouver shipyard in December, it will bear Franklin’s name. There’ll be a decommissioning ceremony for the Ricker at Patricia Bay in October.