I’d like to recount an isolation session during which I survived with only a landline to the outside world. It was comforting knowing that the earth still turned, even without my help, as I slipped into a time zone that could be controlled by a remote.
Montreal’s return to an 8 pm-to-5 am curfew April 11 was greeted by a large protest in the city’s Old Port, culminating in a small minority setting fires and breaking shop windows. Most of the 1,000 or so protesters defying the curfew had dispersed when police forces closed in.
One of few benefits of social media is the sharing of old photographs from the past. Recently, I’ve come across several black-and-white photos that highlight my home community of Attawapiskat from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
I feel a huge amount of empathy towards people who have lost loved ones during the Covid pandemic even though I could not fully understand.
It’s been a lonely year for many. Many relationships have been tested, undergoing great stress in confined conditions with diminished finances. Often, they have broken down, leaving people even more alone, with the accompanying depression and other mental-health problems.
It’s getting warmer outside, and I’ve taken the time to get my deck chairs out to sit under the warmth of the sun. After a strange winter of seeing the inside my house all the time due to the pandemic restrictions, it feels good to be under a clear blue sky again in the backyard.
As the pandemic tide rises on the third wave of Covid’s newest strain, it makes me think of something I wrote a year ago. I mentioned that the virus would evolve into different variants, and guess what? I was right.
It’s remarkable how some people in decision-making positions can be so tone-deaf to the public conversation. In Quebec, we’ve seen the furor over police abuse of Indigenous women in Val-d’Or, the resulting Viens commission report, and the shocking story of Joyce Echaquan dying in a Joliette hospital as she listened to racist slurs from the nurses whose job it was to treat her.
A few months after the death of Joyce Echaquan, Mireille Ndjomouo, a 44-year-old Black woman, posted a shocking video on Facebook from the Charles-Le Moyne Hospital in Longueuil on Montreal’s South Shore.
It’s been several days in isolation as I sit here surfing YouTube and trying to figure out what to watch. I’ve eaten about everything on the restaurant menu several times as I try not go stir crazy and jump out the window into the inviting snow outside.
