2025 A Year of Challenge and Patience

April 4: Last Thursday I had my first Pfizer vaccine shot at Sunnybrook Hospital. When I arrived there were 5 or 6 people lined up outside the door to the clinic. I joined them and, after a few moments of glancing around, I felt a huge upwelling of emotion.

Both Mum and Dad died in the building adjacent to the clinic. They were both Veterans and therefore spent a short amount of time in “K” and “L” Wings before they died. I still miss them both. So a large part of the emotion I felt was surely sadness triggered by the surroundings. But there was more as well.

I was also feeling relief at being vaccinated. After the better part of a year dealing with lockdowns of various sorts, social distancing, and the isolation of living alone, it felt in some small way as though there was hope that it might all be ending. That thought made me briefly happy, but the emotion was soon overwhelmed by sadness at the thought of the many lives lost and disrupted by the virus; the on-going struggle of so many people who are forced to work at precarious jobs because they have no alternative; the kids who have lost an important year of socialization; health-care workers struggling to keep up with the viral tidal wave; the communities that were still without vaccine so that I could get a shot and then go home to sit safely in my apartment.

At this point I will simply say that I believe with all my heart that the vaccine strategy in Ontario has been a complete disaster. I’m certainly grateful for the protection it offers, but as I have just said, there are so many other more needy groups that should have been vaccinated before me. They are necessary to keep our society moving forward toward a resolution of the pandemic. I am not. And while I isolate yet again (still ?), the Ford government has decreed a “lockdown” that does little more than delay my future haircut for a month. Schools remain open, we can gather in groups of 5, and businesses are free to welcome limited numbers of customers. Meanwhile ICU beds fill up; our medical system is pushed to the point of collapse.

So there was the emotion of anger as I thought about the circumstances around my vaccination, and sadness at the realization that it surely didn’t have to be this way. That left a feeling of helplessness. We are where we are in large part because of the actions of other people – primarily our Provincial government.

If there had been an earlier, much harder lock-down, I believe we would have had far fewer infections. If the government had strengthened the lock-down provisions 3 weeks ago instead of opening up, it would have reduced the impact of the third wave. In my view, if the Ford government had focused on inoculating seniors and front-line workers first, the vaccination strategy would have been more effective. It would have saved lives and protected our health care system.

So I left the hospital after getting my shot feeling gratitude and a degree of relief. But there was also a real sense sadness and disappointment as I thought about the circumstances that allow a healthy if somewhat over-the-hill privileged white male a shot while so many other more deserving citizens wait their turn.

March 8: Today is Mum’s Birthday. Had she lived this long, she would have been 99 years old. And she was just about stubborn enough to do it. In celebration of the day, I went to the store and bought a small pot of Hyacinth.

These are wonderful little flowers that fill the room with their scent. When she lived with Dad at Briton House, I would take them a little pot of spring flowers including Tulips, Hyacinth and Daffodils on her birthday. Whether she knew it or not, it was a bit of a tradition for me as a way to celebrate her day, to brighten the apartment for them, and hopefully as a harbinger of Spring being right around the corner. There was the added selfish benefit of being able to take the bulbs home when the blossoms were done, and put them in the garden for next year.

Indeed there are harbingers of Spring everywhere these days. I saw a Robin on the ground this morning looking for worms – popsicle worms for the next little while – and while I know that they stay around all Winter, it’s nice to see them back on the grass as opposed to shivering in the trees. Cardinals have been singing for a week or more, and the Crows have been carrying on their long-distance conversations for some time. This time last year, we saw a pair of rabbits in the courtyard, but with construction underway, that seems pretty unlikely this year.

And it has been a strange year for certain. I’ve spent the better part of the last 3 months indoors except for trips to the grocery store and runs around the neighbourhood. Some of those got put on hold when the weather got into the minus-teens, and I felt worse for that. Face-to-face contacts have been limited to people I know that I can trust to have isolated over the last while. But as difficult as it has been for me, I think of how difficult it might have been for Mum.

She enjoyed singing with her choir, and was very determined to have her hair set / cut / permed every week. She was quite mobile and didn’t take kindly to people telling her what she could and couldn’t do. Being a resident of a senior’s home, she would have been under a severe lock-down, and  wearing a mask would have undoubtedly been a test of wills at some point. Chin thrust forward I can almost hear her muttering about how stupid it is to wear this thing ….

So for the next few days at least, I’ll have a small pot of flowers to remind me of her and those days when things seemed to be a little more comfortable and enjoyable. Hopefully, we will soon return to more normal circumstances. Fingers crossed.

February 14: Today is Valentine’s Day* and I find myself alone. There’s an assumed conjunction between being alone, being unhappy and being unwell. I don’t agree.

I’ve been living on my own since last September. Obviously, the first few weeks and months of this change in circumstances was made somewhat more exciting by the need to move and then get settled into new surroundings. I found it very rewarding to have imagined how the new apartment could be set up, and then to actually work through the process of making it happen. There were issues which became opportunities for creativity. A few weeks ago, I finally finished hanging a few pictures and the place now feels like “mine”.

Because of the pandemic, I’ve been alone throughout this time. As I’ve recently written, it often felt that time was without limit and this made actually getting motivated to do things more difficult. Yet there have been relatively few times when I’ve actually felt bored, distressed or unhappy about being alone. A recent article in the Globe and Mail quoted John Eastwood, a clinical psychologist at York University as saying:

“…”doing nothing” means a lack of constraint or pressure. There are no external forces placing demands on how we spend our time, which means we have the opportunity to be fully present with what is happening. It means being time-rich. Being bored on the other hand means having an unfilled desire to be engaged in satisfying activity. It is associated with the feeling that time is dragging. Bored people are restless and looking for something they can’t find. It is very possible, and arguably desirable, to be “doing nothing” but not be bored. The prime example of this would be looking out the window and getting lost in daydreams, which can have great value.”

He makes an important distinction that I have found to be true in my own experience. Frequent reader(s) will know that I became interested in buying a cottage just before Christmas. I made a couple of offers but the cottage was ultimately withdrawn from the market until the Spring. As I wait for it to reappear, I have been daydreaming / scheming about ways to conclude the deal. Once I own the place (at least in my imagination), I imagine all of the problems that might arise and their possible solutions. There’s much work to be done, and many, many issues to be overcome. I’ve spent hours lost in thought analyzing each of these and then marveling at how wonderful my solution will be when realized.

To an outside observer, I would be “doing nothing”. And arguably I should be focusing on problems that actually exist and working toward their solution rather than “wasting time” imaginary and potentially non-existent scenarios. Still, that effort ultimately takes me to a happy place full of realized potential that might exist after this lockdown has finally ended. I imagine a fully-fledged cottage: a glass of rose in a Muskoka chair watching Segwun cruise by at dusk. In that sense I may be a dreamer. But I’m never bored.

* The truth is that we have all been locked down for so long that it feels more like Groundhog Day than Valentine’s Day, but that is a story for another time.

January 18: For several years I wrote New Years Objectives. I was reluctant to call them resolutions because that seemed to imply that you could resolve to do something but then never actually follow through on doing it. My city planning background told me that to be meaningful, these sorts of things had to be explicit, they had to be measurable, and they had to be on a timetable. So for example, one year I set the objective of running a 10 km race in under an hour before my birthday. I accomplished that; box checked. Personal satisfaction ensues.

In setting these objectives, I identified different areas where I felt the need for improvement or growth. These have changed over the years but have included physical well-being; personal creativity; spiritual and emotional growth; and, financial security. Some of these objectives are really a continuation of what has been in place for the previous year: continue running and try to develop a stretching and strength-building routine. The running part is easy; the stretching and strength part, not so much.

I like to think of myself as a creative person and “being more creative” has been an objective for many years. Obviously, you can’t measure creativity. Simply churning out endless numbers of useless paintings to meet a deadline is not very creative. While I attend classes (now virtually) during the school year, I gradually lapse into not painting at all when the classes are not active. My objective in the past has been to develop a routine that provides an opportunity to do something creative as often as possible. Even an hour a day sketching, painting or writing would be a huge improvement and probably a benefit to my mental well-being.

And there’s the problem: with the COVID lockdown in place, time has become infinite. Every day is the same as the last. There’s no rush to do anything because there is always another day. I find this immensely discouraging. I’m not motivated to do anything significant because it can always be done tomorrow. I’m wasting precious time by not making better use of this period of enforced introspection and unlimited opportunity.

So for now I have not really written any objectives for 2021 (although simply avoiding the virus might be worthwhile). Instead, I’m starting small: for the next while I’m going to try to be more purposeful and present in my life. Take more opportunities as they come and focus on actually doing some new things to distract from the day-to-day sameness we all face. A step in the right direction. And who knows ? In time I might actually find the time to write some objectives for the rest of the year. You know: that time when we can go outside again.

December 20: The news arrived toward the end of last week that the computer systems and data banks of many US government departments and agencies had been hacked by foreign agents. Among those victimized were the Department of Homeland Security and the departments of Treasury, Commerce and Energy among others. Apparently the attackers used a vulnerability in a software program developed by a US company called SolarWinds to access servers across the country. One commentator likened the process to having your phone updated every night. There’s new data added and updates to software which go largely unnoticed. According to some, it’s the most serious attack on the US since Pearl Harbor.

The attack also affected governments and businesses in Canada, Europe and elsewhere around the world. Most analysts suggest that the attack was perpetrated by the Russian security service. It took patience and time to succeed, and was so intricate that most experts I have seen automatically rule out the vast majority of other players. Whoever is responsible, the damage is done and it will take many months to understand the extent of what has happened, and even longer – perhaps years – to correct the damage.

I have long believed that the next war will be fought in cyberspace. Indeed, I understand that hacks and attacks on government computer systems are pretty much a daily occurrence. There is a “battle” on-going that we unwittingly join simply by going on-line. It seems to me that we are blissful in our ignorance of the real dangers we face from cyber attack; imagine for example what would happen if the internet was to shut down for even a day or two.

The parallels with the current pandemic are obvious. We have been and will continue to be attacked by malicious “viruses” that have the ability to totally destroy our lives as we know them today. They are unseen, introduced willfully or by accident and can be undetected for long periods of time. They can transmit rapidly between hosts, and mutate as they do so. They seem to become endemic, and are extremely difficult to combat or eradicate once established.

We are certainly right to be concerned about the current and future impacts of the COVID pandemic; its’ effects will be with us for years. I also think that we need to wake up to the very real dangers we face in our increasingly computer / app-driven world. The scope of the recent hack demonstrates how complacent we have become, and how vulnerable we are to an “electronic pandemic” that will be much more damaging and long-lasting than anything COVID can send our way.

 

December 4:

November 21: The last month has unfolded behind an ominous drumbeat of increasing COVID case numbers. As the Ford government threatens a lockdown and dithers about when and if it will happen, hospitalizations and deaths increase daily. The weather has turned colder and a tendency to remain indoors and isolated has made for a melancholy time. But in spite of all the bad news, there have been some bright spots.

Cottaging: In August I wrote about a trip to Muskoka to see the sights and railed in a sanctimonious way against the oversized and out-of-character nature of recent cottage homes. Shortly after, and completely by accident, I stumbled across a listing for a very dilapidated cottage on a private island directly in front of the last cottage we owned (now owned by my friend McCart). It struck a chord in me and I have spent the last month trying to figure out a way to buy it. It’s eye-wateringly expensive and needs far too much work to be a reasonable proposition at my stage in life, but unfortunately, I have a vision of what it could be like, and I have become a bit fixated on getting ahold of it. We are a long way from any sort of deal. I’ll let you know how this goes.

May I Help You: Also in August, I wrote about trying to get a replacement Pleasure Boat Operators Permit from Boaterexam.com . I had telephoned at least 5 times, and sent a further 4 or 5 e-mails to the company trying to get a replacement license, but heard absolutely nothing from them in the intervening 4 months. About a week ago I decided to contact the Federal Ministry of Transportation to see if they could get a response, and in the course of that, called Boaterexam once again. As expected, I got the robot answering machine, left a message and expected nothing further.

A couple of days later the phone rang with one of those long – short rings that signifies a long-distance call.  I was trying to ignore it when I spotted Boaterexam on the call display. Snatching up the handset I found that it really was them, actually returning my call. When I mentioned to the caller that I had first called in July and had subsequently heard nothing, she said “We’ve been a bit busy….” No apology, no further explanation. “We’ve been a bit busy….” For 4 months. Anyway, 10 minutes and $30 later and I now have a replacement license. And if the cottage works out, I’ll need it.

Keep Left: Paul Romer, Stanford economist, once said “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” With the COVID pandemic in full swing there seems to be no shortage of crises that we are in the process of wasting. In no particular order we have Black Lives Matter and the need for racial equality; indigenous land claims and the need for reconciliation (however you define that); climate change and environmental impacts including the extinction of species; social inequity and the need for affordable housing across the country; inter-provincial relationships and trade structures;  Police relations with minorities and the need to eradicate a toxic work environment at the RCMP. Feel free to add as many more as you wish.

Throughout it all, our governments have been banging the drum of getting COVID under control. Every day I see various talking heads say “I’d love to tackle that problem, and we will, but right now we have to be focused on helping each and every Canadian through the pandemic ….” Chief among the apologists is Justin Trudeau. Make no mistake: I’m an old lefty from years gone by. But false concern expressed in his practiced theatrical voice drives me nuts. When will he actually DO SOMETHING rather than talk about it ? So here’s a little something to consider from the ever insightful and prickly Rex Murphy. Wouldn’t it be nice ….

Rex Murphy: Conjuring up an even greater reset (msn.com)

October 29: Over the last 3 weeks I’ve finished my move from the townhouse to my new apartment. During that time, I’ve been thinking about the many times that I have moved and the emotions that those moves have stirred up.

I remember sitting on Mum and Dad’s blue down-filled couch watching the furniture being moved into the house on Inglewood. I was 5 and would live in that house for 20 years. After landing my first full-time job, I moved to a second floor apartment on  Walmer Road that had a small fireplace, an even smaller balcony, and hideous bright yellow paint on the walls. That could be fixed with a coat of paint, but the gold shag carpet haunted my days there.

Another couple of moves and I was living in a third floor one-bedroom on Parliament Street just south of Carlton. This was, and remains, one of my favourite places to live because it was right in the middle of the action on the street. I could walk to work (at City Hall in those days), and then shop for dinner on the way home. It really taught me the joys of living in a city environment. After a couple of happy years there, Mum and Dad helped me to buy my first house on Martin Road, not far from where I’m living now. It was a power of sale deal for $55,000 and it needed a fair bit of work to bring it up to date.

I took advantage of a Federal make-work stimulus program to build and addition on the back and relocate the kitchen to the front of the house. But unfortunately, no amount of work could replace the stairs which were so steep that they would not have been out of place on a submarine. Only after falling down them a few times did I figure out that the best way to descend was to stick your toes out to the sides and walk down like a duck to make sure that your whole foot landed on the step.

After Melinda and I got married in 1987, we moved to the Lakeshore in Etobicoke and lived in a quintessential 2 bedroom post-war bungalow. There were 3 rooms in the basement and a separate bathroom, so Marisa had her own kingdom as she grew through public school, high school and university.

I’ve been in Garden Court for 6 years now and have (mostly) enjoyed being back in a very urban environment. When I look back on all these moves, I associate them, with fundamentally happy periods in my life. Usually they signified a new start in a fresh environment and an opportunity to create a new life experience. Moving has been a transition from one way of life to another, full of hope and promise. It’s exciting to be starting afresh, even if the hauling of boxes is somewhat less than enjoyable.

This most recent move has been all of those things. I really enjoy the space, and I think I now have it more or less set up to my taste. Most of the time, I can find the things I’m looking for, and there’s space for painting and maybe even playing a bit of bass guitar. Unfortunately, it’s on the second floor so I already miss the day-to-day interaction with all of our friends around the townhouse door. We were a regular stop on the dog-walking circuit and we made many friends in the brief time we were there.

But being off the ground feels like withdrawing from people, and that feeling is heightened by the end of my relationship with Kate and the resurgence of the COVID virus. We are again facing a lock down that begins with the onset of winter. The whole situation feels ominous to me at this point so the hopefulness and promise of my move to a new place is tempered with concern. After so many happy moves, this is a new experience for me – one I don’t particularly enjoy.