Tag Archives: covid19

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Not My Worst Year Ever; Not Even Close

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A Melancholy Look Back

By the time you read this it will be 2021, or on the utter verge. Finally and mercifully. There are a couple of reasons I haven’t yet written this ode to this truly shitty year. One reason is a true lament: I don’t get much time to write these days. When I do I try to make it count.
Hopefully this will count for something. But the real reason, I say with only some jest, is that there was still time for more awful stuff to happen. As it’s happened nearly every day since early March.

In Canada and the world, far too many people can honestly say that the past 365 days (from March on, specifically) have been the worst ever. I agree wholeheartedly. Excluding those that have lived through war, famine and other atrocities and personal struggles, it’s been the nastiest bugger of a year that many millions of people have lived through or are likely to ever experience.

I know a few folks who have experienced the very worst that COVID-19 has to offer. I think they know who I’m talking about and for what it’s worth, I believe they know that they have my heartfelt sympathy.

Amid all the chaos and turmoil, somehow, almost inexplicably, this hasn’t been my worst year. Far from it. In fact, so far that I can’t even draw vague parallels. In some ways, my 2020 has been a largely uninterrupted extension of my 2019, one of my best years ever. I’ve been reflecting on this paradox for weeks. Continue reading →

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A Day Of Hope In A Year To Forget

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November 14, 2020

Last Saturday was a spectacular day, amid a year that’s truly sucked like few in recent history. The centrepiece was an outing to Dundas Valley Conservation Area, where we celebrated our niece’s birthday with a nice hike. We stopped several times, to take a good look at Tews Falls and then at the Town of Dundas below us. Then the five of us – including our daughter and our niece’s boyfriend – enjoyed a delicious charcuterie-based lunch. The temperature was an unseasonable 22 degrees Celsius, allowing us to go jacket-free and sit on blankets laid out on the grass.

The hike had barely started when my buddy from work texted me two messages in quick succession: “Biden wins!” and “273.” The first message is self-explanatory while the second shows three more than the number of electoral college votes required to boost Joe Biden from candidate to President-elect of the United States. Four days of highly contentious vote counting had evidently produced a winner.

I was immediately as ecstatic as he was and blurted out the news. We’re both long haul truck drivers who spend two-thirds of each week on the highways and byways of the States. We’ve talked often about our strong dislike – to put it extremely mildly – for Donald Trump. Now we got to share in the revelry of him losing the election. I checked Facebook and more than a few friends took time out of their Saturday afternoon to share their cheer at the news. Continue reading →

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Into The COVID Coffers

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Two Different Deaths and Other Isolation Thoughts

1. Mournful

Tuesday April 7, 2020 was an unusually warm evening in this strange new coronavirus world. Just after 9pm, I pulled into my go-to truck stop in Mount Nebo, West Virginia. Usually I park among strangers: road-weary drivers that I don’t know and don’t care to meet. This time my friend Paul parked beside me at the back of the massive lot. He typically drives a different route and on a different schedule, and we talk only on the phone. But the COVID-19 crisis has quickly forced major changes in the trucking industry and on this rare occasion he was in the Carolinas too.

He departed North Carolina an hour later than I did but his loaded trailer was much lighter than mine. So he managed to pass me minutes before the U-Save Travel Plaza. We were glad to have the opportunity for in-person conversation. Of course, we were six feet apart as per now-standard COVID regulations, him sitting in his driver’s seat, me standing outside in the clean air of the Appalachian Mountains.

We talked for a short while before Paul went for a walk to stretch his legs and then ate his late evening dinner. I breezed through my regular 30-minute workout outside my truck then went inside the store for a shower. As I waited for the shower to heat up, I took a quick look at Facebook. I’ve become more curious about my friends’ posts since this virus struck and started upending all our lives.

The first post I saw announced the worst possible news. A woman I know from high school had just lost her husband to the virus. She posted several photos of him smiling and surrounded by family. She wrote a brief and sincere message stating that they always believed he would come back home. I teared up immediately. I looked back at her previous posts to remind myself of her husband’s circumstances. Then I posted a short message of condolence. This was the first person even remotely close to me to contract the virus. I never anticipated the first might be fatal. Continue reading →

New Respect in a COVID World

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Respect, Remarkably

I always wanted to feel valuable at work. I rarely did during the decade-plus that I toiled as an online journalist. Sure, I wrote enough great content, did some cool video editing and was a collaborative team member. But I never felt useful and respected at the level I had anticipated when I started my journalism training.

In fact, it wasn’t until this last week that I felt that level of usefulness and respect. With the shit storm of COVID-19 running rampant all over the world and me out on the road faithfully trucking along, the adulation that I’d long figured would one day come … well, it finally did, in an ironic way.

I originally set my sights on journalism because I wanted to turn my writing gifts into a sustainable living. I foresaw recognition and advancement that never came. Then the bottom dropped out of the journalism world. In 2013 my department at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) got axed. I went through four hard years of varied employment before I looked into trucking. It seemed to be the only quick route back to a decent living. Nearing 50 and with few options, I jumped at the opportunity. I never envisioned that I’d be much more than content in this new world. I surely never imagined being bestowed with admiration. Continue reading →