For those who regularly read this column, obviously I am not on the obituary page.

For those who don’t, I spent one day last week experiencing exemplary care in our new hospital. In fact, it is difficult to say enough about the care provided by the nurses, staff and doctors.

For those who do not receive such outstanding service, it is perhaps because they create their own level of care: ‘go in with attitude, go out with an unpleasant experience.’

My only challenge now is to adhere to the admonition from the surgeon: don’t get it wet – for four weeks! I’m guessing he’ll need a mask when he removes the pin from a month of unwashed foot.

Last week I also visited another remarkable edifice – the Golden Ears Bridge. It is a magnificent crossing, particularly with the northern mountains bathed in sunshine.

If the vision that created this bridge is used on the new Port Mann, travel on the Lower Mainland will, after decades, once again be a pleasant experience. And it can’t come soon enough because no matter how much the people in downtown Vancouver think the sun rises and sets on bicycles (until it rains), the rest of the world still relies on cars and trucks and commercial transports to get things done.

And all the commuter trains and bike lanes in the world won’t change the necessity of trucks to move the goods and services we use in this province and throughout the rest of North America.

And until the new Port Mann and attendant routes such as the South Fraser Perimeter Road are complete, the cost to move goods will continue to be measured, as dollars and time lost, in the billions.

My only critique of the Port Mann expansion proposal is it doesn’t go far enough. Adding more lanes to the freeway from Vancouver to 216 Street in Langley is good, but anyone westbound Sunday through Abbotsford would attest to the need for additional lanes all the way out here, and perhaps even beyond.

Almost any day you travel Hwy. 1 through the Valley, it is jammed. And on a summer weekend it is worse as city dwellers head for, or return from, a few days away.

With any luck, and a little foresight, by the time the new Port Mann crossing is complete, the economy will have recovered sufficiently that the provincial government, along with a healthy dose of federal funding, will realize two more lanes each way through the Valley, not only make sense but are necessary.

Transportation improvements, however, are not the only issues on my mind lately. Change, as reluctant as I occasionally am to it, is coming to this newspaper.

This will be the last time you see it in large format for, after its more than 80-year history as a ‘broadsheet’, with the next edition The News will become a tabloid.

I at first mourned the change, then came to accept the truism that not only do good things often come in smaller packages, they are much easier to handle.

I like the new look, the new banner and will eventually reconcile that size does not necessarily reflect the substance contained within it ... and substance is what is most important. That will continue.

So while I might miss what was once a defining image, I also recognize the dissemination of information in today’s world has changed a great deal.

This newspaper now has a new editor, a new publisher, and a new advertising leader. It was time for a new look.

markrushton@abbynews.com