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Are Canadians ready for sustained sacrifices in the age of COVID-19? We're about to find out – CBC.ca

Published

4 years ago

March 29, 2020

It’s the stuff our grandparents and great-grandparents talked about — the sacrifices of the war. Rationing, converting factories over from making baby carriages to building bombs. People volunteering their time, sometimes risking their lives, to keep their neighbours safe.

The idea that we’re all in this together has not been invoked in this country in such a visceral way since the Second World War. Other eras have involved suffering and sacrifice, of course — but not to the extent where almost the entire country is in lockdown.

The language being used by the Liberal government, the opposition parties and even corporations to describe the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has, on occasion, summoned the ghosts of that long-ago time.

War of a different kind

There’s talk of us being at “war” with the novel coronavirus, of “mobilizing” medical equipment manufacturers. We’ve heard politicians and public health officials plead with Canadians to maintain physical distancing and keep to their homes — through appeals to civic duty.

For the most part, people have listened and are complying. The question facing political and institutional leaders in the coming weeks is whether this sense of national solidarity and sacrifice can be sustained.

During his daily media briefing on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke again about how “very optimistic” he is that “we are going to get through this in the right way, because Canadians do what they need to do to be there for each other” in a time of crisis.

This is unprecedented in human history. We’re being asked to shut down everything for a very lengthy period of time. And we won’t know until after we’re done whether the policy itself had the desired effect.– Historian Mark Humphries

But he wasn’t able to say how long the lockdowns and physical distancing measures will last, or how bad this pandemic could get. Will we still be stuck in our homes in two weeks? Two months? The Canadian military is readying itself for up to a year of COVID-19 response operations.

“There are obviously many, many different projections of how long this could last, how serious this could be, how many cases we could be facing. But those projections all hinge on choices that Canadians are making today, choices they made over the past few days, choices they will be making over the coming few days,” Trudeau said.

Convincing people to live smaller lives

With the invocation of the Quarantine Act and the threat of fines and jail time for those who do not obey orders to isolate following travel, Trudeau and his ministers have, in some respects, put themselves on a tightrope that no Canadian government has had to walk on since the war.

The dilemma of convincing people to stick with a government plan involving personal sacrifice is not unlike the challenges that faced the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, the agency which oversaw price and inflation control, business activity and rationing during the Second World War.

A wartime poster urges Canadians to take part in scrap drives. (Library and Archives Canada, Acc)

Although its reach and powers under the old War Measures Act were much more sweeping than the measures now being deployed against the pandemic, the board grappled with the same fundamental challenge — of cajoling, hectoring and sanctioning people to get them to obey limits on how they lived. And it did so for almost eight years.

One of the lessons learned by the Liberal government of former prime minister MacKenzie King was that it had to be selective in how hard it came down on violators, said Christopher Waddell, a journalism professor at Carleton University who wrote a thesis in the early 1980s about the board.

‘Voluntary compliance’

Today, governments are threatening people who don’t follow physical distancing or self-isolation measures with fines and jail time. Back then, wartime leaders learned that the authorities can’t be everywhere all of the time.

“You don’t have the resources to enforce it. And if you did have the resources to enforce mandatory things, you’d probably be diverting those resources from something that is more important,” said Waddell. “Ultimately, you have to rely on voluntary compliance. You have to do as much exhortation as you can.”

A lone pedestrian steps off an escalator at a quiet mall in Ottawa, Wednesday March 18, 2020, after stores were closed in response to the virus’s spread. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

And when governments do crack down, they run the risk of making a public spectacle of people flouting the law — which ultimately undermines both their credibility and their authority.

The Wartime Prices and Trade Board imposed $1.7 million in fines and threw 253 people in jail for violations. But while the war was raging overseas, said Waddell, news of scofflaws being punished at home was more easy to keep under wraps due to limited media coverage. Things have changed.

“They had a much easier media environment to work in,” he said. “There was no social media showing people flouting the rules.”

How much? How long?

The fact that people don’t know how long the lockdowns will be in place, or what kind of collective and personal sacrifices they’ll be called upon to make, renders the current situation even more precarious, said Mark Humphries, a historian at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

“This is unprecedented in human history,” he said. “We’re being asked to shut down everything for a very lengthy period of time. And the reality is we won’t know until after we’re done whether the policy itself had the desired effect.”

One of the challenges wartime leaders faced was to explain the tradeoff to civilians: the cost of the sacrifices versus the promise of victory. Humphries said that challenge is even greater now because the pandemic brings with it so many intangibles.

“If Canadians are being asked to make significant personal sacrifices, which may well be necessary, I think we also have to have a very good understanding of what we’re being asked to do. And we’re going to have to understand the degree to which it is likely to have the effect that is hoped,” said Humphries, who is also the author of the book The Last Plague, which examined the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918.

What leaders say and don’t say will shape how Canadians respond.

The public needs a better understanding of the plan, Humphries said — particularly when it comes to whether the current lockdown strategy ignores larger ethical, economic, social and cultural questions.

That’s a debate that has to happen in public, he said, if the public is to remain fully onside.

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World Junior Girls Golf Championship coming to Toronto-area golf course

Published

24 mins ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.

The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.

Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.

“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.

“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”

McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.

“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”

Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.

Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.

“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.

“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”

Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.

Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.

Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.

“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.

“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”

The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.

Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.

Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.

Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.

“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Red Wings sign Raymond to 8-year, $64.6 million contract

Published

27 mins ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit Red Wings signed forward Lucas Raymond to an eight-year, $64.6 million contract Monday, completing a deal with one of their best young players less than 72 hours before training camp begins.

Raymond will count $8.075 million against the salary cap through 2032. The 22-year-old was a restricted free agent without a contract for the upcoming NHL season and was coming off setting career highs with 31 goals, 41 assists and 72 points.

The Red Wings have another one of those in defenceman Moritz Seider, who won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year in 2021-22.

Detroit is looking to end an eight-year playoff drought dating to the Original Six franchise’s last appearance in 2016.

Raymond, a Swede who was the fourth pick in 2020, has 174 points in 238 games since breaking into the league.

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Purple place: Mets unveil the new Grimace seat at Citi Field

Published

28 mins ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.

The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”

Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.

That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.

New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.

The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.

The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.

“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”

Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.

So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?

“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.

“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”

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