Most Canadians dearly want to bury the past couple of years in some deep vault and get on with their lives in something that resembles that “normal” everyone had taken for granted before the pandemic came calling. Who can blame them?
Of course, the virus that keeps on giving is not letting us go just yet, with new and “improved?” versions ready to slip by our immune systems and make life miserable. Unfortunately, especially for our most vulnerable citizens, those new versions are promising to prove as deadly as the old.
Given the horrendous tales that emerged from within the nation’s long-term care residences during the first waves of the pandemic it is distressing to realize that it came as a surprise to even this paper that Canada was foremost in the globe for COVID-related deaths in that first wave. That is not a podium to be ascended with pride.
As Professor Emeritus Megan Davies, the force behind the unsettling ‘COVID in the House of Old’ exhibit recently installed at various locations in Wiikwemkoong and which is making its way across the nation, noted we know what is wrong with how we warehouse our elderly and most vulnerable and how to fix it. What we need now is the political will to do so.
That political will cannot be fueled by willful blindness or a convenient collective amnesia among the public.
Recent outrage and controversy over the removal of land from the Greenbelt led to a quick reversal and an unprecedented and unequivocal apology being issued by Premier Doug Ford.
The travesty that was the long-term care home crisis in the first wave of the pandemic led to the mobilization of 24,000 Canadian Forces personnel to assist the nation’s health system, unprecedented outside the boundaries of war.
The horrendous tales of neglect that emerged when those soldiers revealed what they found within the walls of long-term care homes shook the nation to its core. How could we so soon forget?
Certainly, we have made strides in ensuring that some of the root causes of that infamy, but nowhere near the distance has been placed between what was to what is as is needed.
Manitoulin was incredibly lucky throughout that first wave and beyond, a testimony to our health care workers and residence administrations whose diligence was rewarded in priceless coin—the survival of our families’ loved ones.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it—we must not allow ourselves, or our political masters to ever forget that this happened on our watch. This is in no way a criticism of the current masters of Queen’s Park or atop Parliament Hill, every party has had a hand in crafting the building blocks of the crisis.
We can and must do better.
