Stay the blazes Home
Copyright © 2020, Len Wagg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re-produced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior writ-ten permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, per-mission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill Street, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Printed and bound in Canada
NB1558
Editor: Angela Mombourquette
Design: Jenn Embree
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Stay the blazes home : Nova Scotia and the COVID-19 pandemic / by Len Wagg.
Names: Wagg, Len, photographer.
Identifiers: Canadiana 20200229001 | ISBN 9781771089432 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Nova Scotia—Social condi-tions—21st century—Pictorial works.
Classification: LCC FC2312 .W335 2020 | DDC 971.6/050222—dc23
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial sup-port for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
Spring 2020 was a dark time for Nova Scotians.
On April 18–19, a gunman went on a rampage that began in Portapique, NS; before it ended, he had taken twenty-two lives. On April 29, a Nova Scotia–based Royal Canadian Air Force Cyclone helicopter crashed off the coast of Greece, killing all six members on board. On May 6, three-year-old Dylan Ehler of Truro went missing; he still has not been found. And on May 17, Capt. Jennifer Casey of Halifax died when the Snowbirds aircraft she was in crashed after takeoff in Kamloops, BC. The flight had been part of a cross-country tour known as Operation Inspiration, which was meant to lift the spirits of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And, of course, between March and July, COVID-19 took the lives of sixty-five Nova Scotians.
Nothing I can say in these pages can come close to honouring each and every one of those lives.
This book is dedicated to the memory of all those Nova Scotians lost.
Table of Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
A Timeline of COVID-19in Nova Scotia . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Part One: Lockdown . . . . . . . . . . 13
An Eerie Emptiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
No Place Like Home: Trapped in New Zealand . . . . . . 24
Pulling Together to Get it Right: Halifax Stanfield International Airport . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
A Lifeline On the Road: Crystal Blair . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Moving Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Keeping Our Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Together Apart:Video Calling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Part Two: Life on the Front Lines 41
Signs of Appreciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Above and Beyond: Nurse Andrea Jenkins. . . . . . . . . . . 45
Emergency Room: Dr. Krista Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Front-line Pharmacists: David LeBlanc and Maggie Arenburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Hauling the Essentials: A Trucker’s Experience . . . . . . . . 50
Hydrostone Grocer: A Truly Essential Service . . . . . . . . 51
A New Way to Gather News:Jean Laroche and Jayson Baxter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
A Snowbird Lost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Part Three: Marking Milestones . 57
We’re in this Together: Signs of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Birth Under Lockdown: Christian and Joanne. . . . . . . . 62
High School Grad with a Twist: Brooke Clarke . . . . . . . 64
Convocation Cancelled: A Creative Solution . . . . . . . . . 65
Drive-By Celebrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Love in the Time of COVID: A Pandemic Wedding . . . . 67
Saying Goodbye: Charlene Chiddenton . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Part Four: The New Normal . . . . . 71
Keeping Ourselves Busy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
A sense of purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Surviving COVID-19: One Family’s Story . . . . . . . . . . 81
Window Visits: Tracy Dryden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Social Butterfly Under Lockdown: Victoria Levack . . . . . 84
Teaching from Home: A New Model for Grade School. . . 85
Home-schooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Working from Home: Balancing Kids and Career. . . . . . 88
Finding Faith Online: Easter Sunday at Saint Benedict . . 90
Helping the Homeless: Shelter Nova Scotia . . . . . . . . . . 92
Masking Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Adapting to the New Reality: Halifax Public Libraries . . 96
Take What You Need: A Community Food Drop Box. . . 98
A Cooking Show is Born: Alain and Johanne Bossé . . . . 99
Survival Baking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Cross-Country Chin Up: Adam Baldwin . . . . . . . . . . . 104
A Kitchen Party forall Nova Scotians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
COVID Hair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
To Sail or Not to Sail:Bluenose II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
A Guest Home Without Guests: Bailey House . . . . . . . . 113
Books on Bikes:Bookmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Bursting the Bubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Taking Wine Online: Lightfoot & Wolfville . . . . . . . . . . 118
Brewing Up Business: Brightwood Brewery . . . . . . . . . . 120
The T-Shirt that Took Off: My Home Apparel . . . . . . . 122
Afterword: Q&A with The Honourable Stephen McNeil 124
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Foreword
arrival in Canada, and continue to guide the health-care system’s response, but this pandemic’s deep and complex impacts across society have proven to be unprecedented, immensely challenging, and, for me, deeply humbling.
At a personal level, the first wave of COVID-19 has been difficult, and has brought countless long days, challenging decisions, and a feeling of tremen-dous responsibility. However, these challenges have been balanced by the many Nova Scotians who have reached out to me to say thank you, to provide en-couragement, and to offer their prayers.
Professionally, it has been humbling to see the care and dedication of people throughout Nova Scotia’s health-care system and within our commu-nities who have worked tirelessly to keep us safe and healthy and to provide essential services for all.
I know that many Nova Scotians have been greatly impacted by COVID-19 and the necessary control measures—most significantly the sixty-five families who lost a loved one to COVID-19. At the same time, Nova Scotians have witnessed count-less examples of people and families going to great lengths to take care of one another.
It is my great hope that such caring and compas-sion can be the ongoing legacy of COVID-19.
Thank you, Len Wagg, for capturing this histor-ic time for all of us.
Dr. Robert Strang
Chief Medical Officer of Health, Nova Scotia
In January 2020, when I and other Canadian public health leaders began to discuss the reports of an out-break of severe respiratory illness in Wuhan City, China, we were aware of the pandemic potential of a new respiratory virus—but none of us could have predicted what the coming months would bring.
We had no real model to go by. Many of us had been involved in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, but that had had much less impact because it was a new strain of a known virus—influenza—and a vaccine was available in time for the second wave. The 1918–19 influenza pandemic had happened under such different societal conditions that it was not able to help us predict in detail the possible impacts of this COVID-19 pandemic. Our federal/provincial/terri-torial pandemic plans provided a good starting point for the early planning of how to manage COVID-19’s
Introduction
home care. Large grocery-store chains implemented incentive-pay programs for the workers who were responsible for keeping stores open. Ad campaigns thanking health-care workers, truckers, and farmers popped up on television and social media.
Like millions of Canadians and thousands of Nova Scotians, I watched Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—and later Premier Stephen McNeil and Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang—present daily updates on the COVID-19 situation, and I began to wonder where we would be in the weeks, months, and years follow-ing this pandemic.
When I saw social media posts with stories and photos from the Nova Scotia Archives referencing the influenza pandemic of 1918, I began to wonder how future generations would see this pandemic. Where would the images of this unprecedented time come from? After the Facebook posts and tweets went away, what would remain as a snapshot of life during COVID-19?
Terrilee Bulger, the general manager and co-owner of Nimbus Publishing, wondered as well. Within days in March we had an outline, and my search for those images and stories began.
One problem became immediately apparent: How could I photograph people without going near them? How could I do interviews without breaking Public Health’s social distancing orders? I resolved to find a way.
I didn’t do it alone. I had help from other pho-tographers, like Paul Darrow, who had started
with me in the newspaper world decades ago. Paul found pictures in his Cole Harbour neighbour-hood in Halifax. Steve Wadden in Sydney covered the socially-distanced wedding of a couple near him. Photographer Nicola Davison captured the boredom-breakers in her Dartmouth communi-ty. Tim Krochak, newly laid off from his newspa-per job, contributed images of daily life during the pandemic. Importantly, Nimbus Publishing put out a call on social media asking you—Nova Scotians—to submit your images of what life was like under lockdown. You came through in a big way, and your images have been included on these pages to help tell the whole story from Port Hawkesbury to Parrsboro to Salmon River.
As COVID-19 arrived in Nova Scotia, the stories became apparent. Heather Thomson, of Pictou County, found solace in music, so she start-ed the Ultimate Online Nova Scotia Kitchen Party (COVID19 Edition), which grew to more than a quarter of a million members. “Caremongering” groups started up all across Nova Scotia, where peo-ple found ways to reach out and help others in need. Older Nova Scotians learned how to use Zoom and FaceTime, and younger people learned the value of puzzles and time at home with family.
Father Simon Lobo delivered his Easter Mass to an empty Halifax church, but to sixteen thou-sand viewers online. As his colleague, Father Alex Colautti, noted, “it’s not the darkness that defines the limits of darkness, it’s the light that defines the darkness.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, like so many other things that affect Nova Scotians, began a long way away.
In early January 2020 our nightly newscasts mentioned a new respiratory disease that was affect-ing people in Wuhan, China. Later that month the news reported that the entire province of Hubei, with a population of 58 million, had been locked down to avoid the spread of this new coronavirus.
As February turned to March, thoughts of a trip down south were still on some people’s minds, but the possibility of international travel soon came to an end as the WHO declared a global pandemic and Canadians were advised to avoid non-essential travel outside of Canada.
We watched with growing anxiety as Nova Scotians, in places all across the globe, scrambled to get home.
When they did, they found that stores, like those across North America, were experiencing shortages of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes. (Months later, we are still trying to figure out why there was such a run on toilet paper!)
A provincial state of emergency was declared; schools and non-essential businesses were closed; airlines virtually shut down. With all this, the eco-nomic impact started to become apparent.
While people isolated at home, front-line and essential workers carried on, driving down empty streets or riding buses and ferries for free en route to work. We quickly came to understand that many people in the lowest-paying jobs were truly essen-tial—truckers, grocery clerks, those working in
That light shone brighter through the actions of Crystal Blair, who worked every day to make sure long-haul truckers were fed when restaurants were closed. It shone through the actions of acute-care nurse Andrea Jenkins, who suited up daily and head-ed to the epicentre of the Nova Scotia pandemic—the Northwood long-term care facility in Halifax—to care for those who were sick and dying. It shone through the kindness of Mariah Kearney, whose business was in trouble, but who came up with an idea that went viral and raised over $100,000 for charities dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. It shone in the words of Charlene Chiddenton as she
told me, through tears, about the last time she saw her father, who died from COVID-19.
As I listened to these stories, it became more and more obvious that the pandemic would have a long-lasting effect on all of us. How incredibly lucky we are to live in an empathetic and caring place like Canada—and more specifically, in Nova Scotia.
Of course, the rules about things like distancing and mask-wearing in public were a moving target as the science around the pandemic evolved. These sto-ries represent the state of things when I spoke with people, mostly in May, June, and July.
While the spring of 2020 will be remembered as
the time we stayed home, watched Netflix, shopped online, and did lots of home cooking, it will also be remembered as the time we cooked for neighbours, shopped online for people who could not afford what they needed, and sang to connect with those we couldn’t meet with in person.
I could go on, but I won’t.
As I quickly realized as I sat or stood six feet away from my interview subjects, my arm stuck out as far as possible as I recorded their voices, this is not my story.
It’s theirs.
A Timeline of COVID-19in Nova Scotia
March 11 • The World Health Organizationdeclares the global outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic.
March 13 • Canada advises citizens to avoid all non-essential travel outside of Canada until further notice. Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang, encourages “individuals, employers, and community organizations” to limit social gatherings to “no more than 150 people.”
March 15 • Nova Scotia reports its first three presumptive cases of COVID-19 and the province implements additional measures under the Health Protection Act, including closing long-term care facilities to visitors, closing public schools for two weeks following March Break, and closing regulated daycares.
March 16 • Canada advises travellers entering Canada to self-isolate for fourteen days.
March 18 • Canada implements a ban on foreign nationals from all countries, except the United States, from entering Canada. The Canada–US border closes to all non-essential travel, and international passenger flight arrivals are redirected to four airports in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
March 19 • Personal service and fitness estab-lishments in Nova Scotia, such as hair salons, bar-bershops, spas, nail salons, body art establishments, and gyms are ordered to shut down. Restaurants are
restricted to take-out and delivery only. University students from Nova Scotia who are still living in residences are told to go home to provide space for social distancing for students from outside the prov-ince who are not able to travel.
March 21 • Nova Scotia restricts hospital visitors.
March 22 • Nova Scotia declares a provincial state of emergency. Residents are told not to leave the province and to only leave home for essential items and services. Provincial parks, beaches, and tourist attractions are closed. Social gatherings of more than five people are prohibited, and police are authorized to enforce orders around gathering limits and social distancing under the Health Protection Act.
March 30 • All public schools and licensed child-care providers in Nova Scotia are ordered to remain closed until at least May 1.
April 2 • Canada surpasses ten thousand con-firmed cases of COVID-19.
April 3 • Premier Stephen McNeil, in response to reports of a rise in attendance at provincial parks and beaches, tells Nova Scotians to “stay the blazes home.” The phrase takes off on social media, inspir-ing numerous memes, stickers, songs, posters, beer labels, T-shirts…and books.
December 31, 2019 • The World Health Organization is alerted to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, caused by a virus that does not match any other known virus.
January 7, 2020 • Chinese researchers identify a new coronavirus (COVID-19) behind the illness.
January 15 • The Public Health Agency of Canada activates the Emergency Operation Centre to support Canada’s response to COVID-19.
January 22 • Canada implements screen-ing requirements related to COVID-19 for trav-ellers returning from China to major airports in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
January 25 • Canada confirms its first case of COVID-19 (in Toronto).
January 30 • The World Health Organization declares the outbreak of COVID-19 a public health event of international concern (PHEIC).
February 9 • Canada expands COVID-19 screening requirements for travellers returning from affected areas to ten airports across six provinces.
February 28 • Nova Scotia advises anyone trav-eling from “an affected area” to closely monitor their health for fourteen days after their arrival in Canada.
March 9 • Canada confirms its first death related to COVID-19. Nova Scotia reports no cases.
Part One: Lockdown
An Eerie Emptiness
As the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in Nova Scotia in mid-March 2020, schools, businesses, and restaurants closed down. When the provincial state of emergency was declared on March 22, Nova Scotians were asked to leave home only for essential items and services. The result was eerily empty streets all across the province.