The thing about a crisis is that it reveals who people truly are, what their habits and personalities are like away from the exterior they want others to see. The COVID-19 crisis is the same - we’re beginning to see people’s true colours.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed? With some exceptions, I generally like what I’m seeing.
Let’s analyze Flin Flon. As a community, we seem to be making the right moves. Nobody’s doing anything stupid or putting others at risk. Nobody’s gotten sick here in well over a month, nearly two, but we’re still taking precautions just in case.
Yeah, we have a couple people ruining the party, but we’ve always had that. The people who give Flin Flon a bad name - attach whatever values, traits or actions you want to that term - have been a very vocal or visible minority of people and have not influenced the actions of the community as a whole.
We’ve had to make sacrifices because the situation called for it. Blueberry Jam, which I know so much of the town looks forward to, has been cancelled for this year. So has pretty much the entire Trout Festival. Other celebrations, like high school graduations, Culture Days, Flin Flon Pride, the Run to the Border and others have needed to recalibrate plans. They’re still around, but things will be much different than before.
Along with that is the understanding that there’s a good reason why things have to be that way, along with the feeling that everything will be back, bigger and better, next year.
We value essential workers, but not nearly enough. A lot of the people we’ve found help keep our lives together are making minimum wage, which is nowhere near enough for what they provide. We really ought to change that when this is all over.
Reaching out a little further, we’ve found that those leading corporate entities will do the right thing when forced to, but will generally do what they have to maintain profit first. Take Flin Flon’s largest employer for instance - they haven’t been good, they haven’t been bad, they’ve just been there, still making cash.
Hudbay hasn’t taken a day off during the crisis in Flin Flon or Snow Lake, since they’re on the essential services list. One Hudbay employee tested positive and a group of workers in Snow Lake were sent home to self-isolate after one person reported having symptoms similar to COVID-19. Later in the outbreak, Hudbay stopped bringing out-of-province contractors to work in northern Manitoba mines because it became unfavourable for business to continue doing so.
At one point, union groups in Flin Flon and Snow Lake walked off the job to protest out-of-province crews coming in. That appears, from the outside at least, to be the single biggest event leading to that change.
Our northern Indigenous communities did the smart thing and put up checkpoints very early in the outbreak to keep outside people out. That measure is a big reason why we haven’t seen a case in any Indigenous community in either Manitoba or in eastern Saskatchewan. We can see in La Loche what happens when COVID-19 makes its way north. The damage could be massive. Way to nip all that in the bud.
Other northern communities are under travel restrictions too, but those have been provincially imposed. Would Flin Flon, Creighton or Denare Beach have chosen to put up their own checkpoints and impose their own systems? I don’t know, but I do know that idea never came up at any city or town council meeting I went to.
On the other side of the coin are the small - need to specify that part - minority of cabin owners upset they can’t head north to their cabins and vacation properties. In a pandemic, comforts are rare and often inaccessible. I understand if someone who lives in Winnipeg and has a cabin at Bakers Narrows feels mad that they can’t go, but they must understand there’s a reason for that and it’s not done just to mess with them. If they don’t get that, whatever comes next is on them exclusively.
At a government level, we’ve seen different approaches. At a federal level, we’ve seen a willingness to solve problems fast - whether or not the solutions will actually work, that’s a different question. I’ve seen plenty of people upset that the increasing amount of money paid out to people will cause economic damage in the long run. I am not an economist or a fortune teller - I don’t know if it will, but I see there are worries.
At a provincial level, in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan, we’ve seen similarities. Both governments have been able to handle the crisis in large centres. We haven’t seen new cases in Winnipeg, Regina or Saskatoon for days.
However, we’ve seen a certain, familiar strain of cluelessness about the north from each group. Best intentions aside, several of the ideas proposed have just not worked out for the north. Manitoba issuing northern travel restrictions after communities already made their own bans, then never actually announcing plans to enforce them? That doesn’t really work.
Saskatchewan issuing travel restrictions very late in the outbreak, then announcing enforcement, then immediately botching it in Flin Flon and Creighton, by blocking off the road north at Creighton but not blocking it off through Candle Lake so people can get through anyway and getting provincial firefighters to staff it, then having them need to leave because there was a fire 20 kilometres away that needed to be fought? That definitely didn’t work.
The last thing to remember? There is no playbook with a pandemic. None of us were alive for the last one and things have obviously changed since then.
Most people are doing everything they can to make sure everyone finds help, can keep on as close to normal and stays safe.
That’s a beautiful thing.
