There’s a caveat in the popular holiday standard I’ll Be Home for Christmas — “if only in my dreams” — and it’s taken on additional meaning as many people prepare to spend the holidays apart from family.
With COVID-19 case numbers rising across the country and a province-wide lockdown in Ontario coming into effect Saturday, returning to one’s hometown to see family and friends is an unlikely and unadvisable prospect.
Across the country, public health experts have urged Canadians to to limit — or even avoid — large Christmas get-togethers this year to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus. That’s caused anxiety for some who’ve had to make difficult phone calls to parents and loved ones to say they won’t be home.
This Christmas is the first that some young people won’t spend at home. Their families say they understand, given the severity of the pandemic. Some have tried to mitigate the disappointment by sending care packages and presents. Others have made elaborate plans for Dec. 25 phone calls and virtual reunions.
Mollie Roy, a 25-year-old who’s staying in Vancouver instead of returning to her Ottawa hometown, admits she felt tempted as she saw people risk a reunion and go home. She was away from home last Christmas due to work, but this year felt different.
“You see other people doing it and you’re like, ‘Well, why shouldn’t I do it if other people are doing it?’ But that’s not really the right attitude, I don’t think, to have at this time of year in general and just about this whole pandemic,” said Roy, who works jobs in the restaurant industry as well as remotely as an office manager.
“Once I made the concrete decision, there was almost relief and just peace.”
She feels fortunate her family is healthy and that she can spend Christmas in Vancouver with her roommate and boyfriend. Roy is in contact with her family and friends in Ottawa, and will reach out to them during the holidays.
Roy said she’ll be spending the holidays in her self-described ‘Christmas palace’ in Vancouver. (Submitted by Mollie Roy)
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said the safest way to celebrate “is with members of your immediate household” and urged Canadians to check with their local health authorities for additional guidance. Each province and territory has its own rules and limits on indoor gatherings, and many have allowances for people who live on their own to have contact with another household.
Dr. Ami Rokach, a clinical psychologist in Toronto, said this holiday season is particularly difficult because of many people’s expectations that this time of year means spending time with family — and restrictions that are still in place after nearly a year disrupt that.
Rokach, who also teaches in the psychology department at York University, recommends people use this time to focus on their individual well-being and to shift their perception.
“Not being able to be with people that you really want to be with doesn’t mean that you need to be lonely,” he said. Technological advances and safe gatherings can “provide us kind of a bridge to a better time,” he added.
WATCH | Psychiatrists discuss coping with being apart during the holidays:
Two psychiatrists answer viewer questions about staying mentally healthy while being isolated during the pandemic over the holidays, including how to cope with isolation and how students can balance added screen time from online schooling. 6:58
Far from home, but still connected
Seb Rocca, a 21-year-old political science student at McMaster University in Hamilton, won’t be returning to England for the holidays. He hasn’t seen his family in nearly a year.
When he left for Canada, his mother urged him to come home for Christmas. But lockdown concerns and fears of not being able to return due to flight cancellations meant he’ll be apart from family at Christmas for the first time. Even if he did decide to return, recently imposed travel restrictions between Canada and the U.K. due to a new variant of the coronavirus would have impacted any plans.
Seb Rocca said his mother mailed him a Christmas care-package from England to make sure he still felt connected to his family during the holidays. (Submitted by Seb Rocca)
Rocca will be spending Christmas with his girlfriend and her parents just outside Hamilton. In advance of this visit, he said he self-isolated as a precautionary measure.
His family in England have gone above and beyond to make him feel at home. His mother sent a stocking, a tree ornament and cards from various members of his family.
“I love my family a lot. They try very hard to make sure that I’m OK,” Rocca said.
He hopes he’ll be able to see his family for graduation in the spring — and he knows exactly what he’ll do then.
“Hug them like it was the last thing I can do on Earth,” he said. “Whether it’s in England or Canada, I just want to hug my family.”
Seb Rocca, left, sits beside his brother Dom during a family visit in 2019. Rocca hasn’t seen his family in nearly a year due to the pandemic. (Submitted by Seb Rocca)
New traditions out of necessity
Christmas is a big deal for Annabel Thornton’s family. Her family moved to Victoria from the United Kingdom when she was five, and the holidays have consistently been when the four of them could be together.
But Thornton, who’s now working on her Ph.D in economics at the University of Toronto, recognized last spring that returning to Vancouver Island during the holidays might be difficult due to the pandemic.
The 24-year-old was able to visit her family in B.C. during the summer. Her boyfriend also returned from Halifax, where he attends university, in mid-November. The two will spend the holidays together at their Toronto apartment.
Annabel Thornton won’t be doing her traditional Christmas Day walk with her family in Victoria this year, but there are still plans for her family to connect for the holiday while she stays in Toronto. (Submitted by Annabel Thornton)
“I have a really good support network in Toronto, thankfully, so I have a lot of friends and I have a lot of people I can talk to,” Thornton said about how she’s handled living on her own for parts of the pandemic. “But it’s definitely hard not seeing [family] at this time of year.”
In lieu of the traditional Christmas Day nature walks and extended pyjama time, her mother has organized a “Zoom murder-mystery” so the extended family can still connect during the holiday.
“We’re just trying to make the best of a sub par situation,” Thornton said.
‘Christmas is a really big thing in my family,’ said Thornton, adding that personalized stockings and extended pyjama time on Christmas morning are part of how her family usually celebrates the holiday. (Submitted by Annabel Thornton)
A time to be thankful
Eric Laing, 22, feels fortunate to have spent most of the pandemic near family. He spent the summer at home in Peterborough, Ont., with his mom, then moved to Vancouver in September to start work as an accounting associate.
Laing, who lives with his brother in Vancouver, is staying in B.C. for the holidays. Their family was supportive of the decision, with some members particularly appreciative that the brothers wouldn’t be putting themselves at risk of exposure during the cross-country flight.
Eric Laing, second from right, said his family was understanding when he decided not to return home for the holidays this year. (Submitted by Eric Laing)
Laing relished being able to go for walks and bike rides with family and friends during the summer in Peterborough, and he and his brother spent the fall hiking and going to the beach. He said that, combined with Zoom and FaceTime calls with his mother, helped keep the feelings of isolation at bay.
“It would be really nice to see the rest of my family for the holidays as we have for so many years,” Laing said. “But I’m really just feeling grateful to be able to spend it with my brother at least.”
MONTREAL – The employers association at the Port of Montreal has issued the dockworkers’ union a “final, comprehensive offer,” threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn’t reached.
The Maritime Employers Association says its new offer includes a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years. It says the offer would bring the total average compensation package of a longshore worker at the Port of Montreal to more than $200,000 per year at the end of the contract.
“The MEA agrees to this significant compensation increase in view of the availability required from its employees,” it wrote Thursday evening in a news release.
The association added that it is asking longshore workers to provide at least one hour’s notice when they will be absent from a shift — instead of one minute — to help reduce management issues “which have a major effect on daily operations.”
Syndicat des débardeurs du port de Montréal, which represents nearly 1,200 longshore workers, launched a partial unlimited strike on Oct. 31, which has paralyzed two terminals that represent 40 per cent of the port’s total container handling capacity.
A complete strike on overtime, affecting the whole port, began on Oct. 10.
The union has said it will accept the same increases that were granted to its counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years. It is also concerned with scheduling and work-life balance. Workers have been without a collective agreement since Dec. 31, 2023.
Only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the port after 9 p.m. Sunday in the event of a lockout, the employer said.
The ongoing dispute has had major impacts at Canada’s second-biggest port, which moves some $400 million in goods every day.
On Thursday, Montreal port authority CEO Julie Gascon reiterated her call for federal intervention to end the dispute, which has left all container handling capacity at international terminals at “a standstill.”
“I believe that the best agreements are negotiated at the table,” she said in a news release. “But let’s face it, there are no negotiations, and the government must act by offering both sides a path to true industrial peace.”
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a statement Thursday, prior to the lockout notice, in which he criticized the slow pace of talks at the ports in Montreal and British Columbia, where more than 700 unionized port workers have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“Both sets of talks are progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia’s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
