Liese Coroy had no intentions of boarding a plane during the coronavirus pandemic.
But then her father tested positive for COVID-19, leaving him stuck in a hospital in Ottawa.
She decided to board a plane from Toronto to Ottawa on April 1 so she could get there in time to see him for the last time, even if it meant wearing a protective suit.
“I dropped everything to fly up to say goodbye to him,” she said. “I think the hardest part was not being able to touch him with my bare hands or hug him. I had gloves on, and did touch him, but it wasn’t the same. ”
Social distancing on the flight there and back was important, she said.
Coroy’s father died due to COVID-19 the day after she arrived.
Liese Conoy flew to Ottawa on April 1 to say goodbye to her father. Photo provided by Liese Conoy.
Travelling has now become one of many routines activities that now feel like a foreign concept since coronavirus spread worldwide.
1:52 Flying some time after COVID-19? Prepare for sky-high fares
Flying some time after COVID-19? Prepare for sky-high fares
But some Canadians are still flying during the pandemic and the experience is starkly different than it would have been just three months ago.
Airlines have slashed the number of flights operating per day or have suspended flights entirely, like Porter Airlines and Sunwing. WestJet has laid off nearly 6,900 people and reduced their domestic flight capacity by 50 per cent. Air Canada has reduced its network of international and domestic flights by 90 per cent but will allow some options to resume starting in June.
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Four airports in Canada remain open for travel, including Toronto Pearson, Montreal-Trudeau, Calgary International and Vancouver International. The Canadian government has advised against all non-essential travel and has instituted the Quarantine Act requiring all travellers to isolate for 14 days if they come back from abroad.
Global News spoke to some who have flown fairly recently and described a vastly different travel experience that will likely reflect what others will observe when and if we return to airports.
‘Terribly nervous’ to fly
Right before her father’s death, doctors told Coroy and other family members that the prognosis was looking dire and it was imperative they get to Ottawa immediately if they wanted to say goodbye.
3:44 Airline changes as COVID-19 restrictions ease
Airline changes as COVID-19 restrictions ease
Under the circumstances, Coroy was already highly anxious to fly, even though prior to the pandemic she was flying at least twice a month for work.
“I was terribly nervous,” she said, adding that she had arrived ready for the short flight with hand sanitizer and masks. It was eerie to be at Toronto Pearson International Airport, a massive space, with barely anyone around, she said.
“It was so empty, I’ve never seen it this way even when I’ve landed at two in the morning,” she said, adding that she stopped to take pictures of how deserted the airport looked.
Entering the plane, Coroy says she was upset as flight attendants told her social distancing would not be possible on the flight, although there were less than 15 people on the plane. Even though she had a row to herself she says, there were people directly in front of her and behind her.
Coroy says this upset her, especially since her father caught the illness.
“I was unable to move. The [flight attendant] almost deplaned me because I wanted to take another seat,” she said.
Global News asked Air Canada about their social distancing policies on flights.
The airline referred to their new CleanCare+ program launched on May 15 that involves new policies to keep travellers safe including “more personal space” in economy class at least until June 30.
Face masks for travellers and PPE for employees are now mandatory on flights and they are now blocking the sale of adjacent seats in economy class as of May 12, unless you are travelling with someone under the age of 14. Enhanced cleaning protocols are now in place as well.
8:49 Coronavirus: The future of travel
Coronavirus: The future of travel
“This experience was bittersweet, I was so glad to see him [but] hated seeing him in pain, and was terrified if I didn’t take extreme care in robing and disrobing that I would become infected,” she said.
Flying home, Coroy was concerned about infecting others since she had been at a hospital, and she continued to wear a mask and keep her distance. Returning to Toronto, she isolated for 14 days as a precaution.
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In the future, knowing there would be adequate social distancing not just in the terminal, but on the plane as well, would make her comfortable enough to fly again, she said.
Empty airports, no food service
Grace Armstrong, a 26-year-old student who goes to Dalhousie University in Halifax decided to fly to Milwaukee, Wis., to isolate with her family instead of staying by herself.
Armstrong says she’d been waiting to find a safer time to fly to her family since the U.S.-Canada border was closed for non-essential visits. She picked a flight on April 30 hoping more cleaning and distancing protocols would be in place by then and she self-isolated two weeks prior as a precaution, she said.
While she felt fairly safe, she says she was nervous about what it would be like to interact with the U.S.-Canada border during the pandemic and the behaviour of other travellers. As a dual citizen, she would be allowed to cross the border.
“From the beginning, I’ve been strict with myself taking precautions and my biggest worry is usually the people around me not doing the same,” she said in an email to Global News.
Masks were required at Halifax Stanfield International Airport, where she was told by a security agent that she was on one of three flights that day. She flew with Delta Airlines, who notified her via email in advance to bring her own food as shops and restaurants were closed in the airport.
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During the flight, antibacterial wipes were handed out, food service was cancelled and flight attendants reminded passengers several times to keep their masks on, said Armstrong.
It was strange to hear announcements on the flight like “thank you for trusting us” instead of the expected “thank you for flying with us,” she added. Delta also emphasized they were doing extra cleaning on the plane and using an additional air purifier, she said.
But she was surprised to see many in the airport were not wearing masks when she reached Detroit, where she had a layover before reaching Milwaukee.
“Once I was in the U.S., it was maybe 50/50 people wearing masks. Deplaning in the U.S. definitely felt like I had stepped into a more dangerous area, especially because the news was on every TV discussing the worsening situation,” she said.
The Halifax Stanfield airport without many travellers. Photo provided by Grace Armstrong.
“Empty airports and having whole rows to yourself is great, but wearing a mask for 12 hours was not,” she said. “I now understand what health-care workers mean when they talk about their ears hurting from wearing a mask all day.”
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Arriving in Milwaukee, Armstrong said it was frustrating to have to continue to keep her distance from her family and isolate away from them for 14 days.
In a few months, her lease will end in Halifax and she will have to fly back in time to isolate for 14 days again before she moves apartments. But if Wisconsin’s cases get worse, she says she won’t fly back so she’s not arriving from a severely impacted area.
Her confidence with travelling for leisure potentially later in the year will really come down to how strict airlines are with their safety measures, and how high the cases numbers end up being wherever she wants to visit, she said.
“I don’t want to take any unnecessary risk of getting sick or getting others sick. In that way, lifting restrictions makes me feel less confident in travelling. Where I am now is opening back up despite numbers rising, so it would be irresponsible for me to leave,” she said.
Questions about COVID-19? Here are some things you need to know:
Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing — very similar to a cold or flu. Some people can develop a more severe illness. People most at risk of this include older adults and people with severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung or kidney disease. If you develop symptoms, contact public health authorities.
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To prevent the virus from spreading, experts recommend frequent handwashing and coughing into your sleeve. They also recommend minimizing contact with others, staying home as much as possible and maintaining a distance of two metres from other people if you go out.
For full COVID-19 coverage from Global News, click here.
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
CALGARY – Sam Edney and Jesse Lumsden sat on a bench on Parliament Hill during an athlete celebration after the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
Having just represented Canada in their sliding sports — Lumsden in bobsled and Edney in luge — the two men pondered their futures together.
“There was actually one moment about, are we going to keep going? Talking about, what are each of us going to do? What’s the next four years look like?” Edney recalled a decade later.
“I do remember talking about that now. That was a big moment,” Lumsden said.
As the two men were sounding boards for each other as athletes, they are again as high-performance directors of their respective sliding sports.
Edney, an Olympic relay silver medallist in 2018 and the first Canadian man to win a World Cup gold medal, became Luge Canada’s HPD upon his retirement the following year.
Lumsden, a world and World Cup bobsled champion who raced his third Olympic Games in 2018, leaned on his sliding compatriot when he returned from five years of working in the financial sector to become HPD at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton in July.
“The first person I called when BCS reached out to me about the role that I’m in now is Sam,” Lumsden said recently at Calgary’s WinSport, where they spent much of their competitive careers and now have offices.
“It’s been four months. I was squatting in the luge offices for the first two months beside him.
“We had all these ideas about we’re going to have weekly coffees and workouts Tuesday and Thursday and in the four months now, we’ve had two coffees and zero workouts.”
Canada has won at least one sliding-sport Olympic medal in each of the last five Winter Games, but Edney and Lumsden face a challenge as team leaders that they didn’t as athletes.
WinSport’s sliding track, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and where Edney and Lumsden did hundreds of runs as athletes, has been closed since 2019 needing a $25-million renovation.
There is no sign that will happen. WinSport took the $10 million the provincial government offered for the sliding track and put the money toward a renovation of the Frank King Lodge used by recreational skiers and snowboarders.
Canada’s only other sliding track in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., has a fraction of Calgary’s population from which to recruit and develop athletes.
“The comparison is if you took half the ice rinks away in the country, hockey and figure skating would be disarray,” Edney said.
“It just changes the dynamic of the sports completely, in terms of we’re now scrambling to find ways to bring people to a location that’s not as easy to get to, or to live out of, or to train out of full time.
“We’re realizing how good we had it when Calgary’s (track) was here. It’s not going to be the end of us, but it’s definitely made it more difficult.”
Lumsden, a former CFL running back as well as an Olympian, returned to a national sport organization still recovering from internal upheaval that included the athlete-led ouster of the former president and CEO after the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Olympic champion pilot Kaillie Humphries suing the organization for her release to compete for the U.S. in 2019.
“NSOs like Luge Canada and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, they’re startups,” Lumsden said. “You have to think like a startup, operate like a startup, job stack, do more with less, especially in the current environment.
“I felt it was the right time for me to take my sporting experience and the skill set that I learned at Neo Financial and working with some of the most talented people in Canada and try to inject that into an NSO that is in a state of distress right now, and try to work with the great staff we have and the athletes we have to start to turn this thing around.”
Edney, 40, and Lumsden, 42, take comfort in each other holding the same roles in their sports.
“It goes both ways. I couldn’t have been more excited about who they hired,” Edney said. “When Jesse was coming in, I knew that we were going to be able to collaborate and work together and get things happening for our sports.”
Added Lumsden: “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I knew how he was going to do in his role and before taking the role, having the conversation with him, I felt a lot of comfort.
“I asked ‘are you going to be around for a long time?’ He said ‘yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’ I said ‘OK, good.'”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.
MALAGA, Spain (AP) — With the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup set to be played in Malaga, Spain, this month, the International Tennis Federation is making a donation to the Spanish Red Cross to support relief and recovery efforts for the recent catastrophic flooding in the country.
The ITF and its two team tournaments said in a news release Tuesday that they “express their deepest sympathy to the victims and support for the communities and families affected by the devastating floods in Spain and its regions.”
The Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup, along with the ITF, “are donating to the Cruz Roja, and we encourage all our fans and followers to contribute as well.”
The ITF did not say how much it is donating.
Authorities have recovered more than 200 bodies in the eastern Valencia region after heavy downpours caused flash flooding. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.
The Billie Jean King Cup matches are scheduled for Nov. 13-20, and the Davis Cup — the last event of 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal’s career — is set for Nov. 19-24, all in Malaga.
