The Pandemic Makes Us Look

Spending hours in self-isolation, we’re seeing ourselves up close. Some of the picture isn’t pretty, but we’re exposing some assets - pedagogical skills to help children with online schoolwork, green thumbs to grow fresh veggies, and maybe even an inner gourmet chef. And then there’s my dear friend in Halifax, still mourning her husband who recently died from cancer, discovering that his Oxford shirts are the perfect material for sewing COVID-19 masks for family and friends. However bad things are, when we tally up what we have, we see others have it worse.

Projects like Victoria, BC’s Rapid Relief Fund let us put our awareness into action. I wrote about the Fund when it was first set up to funnel money quickly into front-line organizations serving the most vulnerable. It’s initial fund-raising goal – which seemed staggeringly ambitious at the time - was $1 million. After raising $6 million, the Fund has shut down, noting that most community needs are being met. For a mid-sized city of mid-sized affluence, this is a remarkable achievement. The 15,000 donations included $695 from residents and staff of Nigel House, a long-term care home for younger adults with disabilities. Brenda Nicoll, a resident, said she took on the task of collecting for the Fund because she had been homeless and needy in the past. She told the Times Colonist she wanted to contribute because “people are unemployed and struggling.”

Then there are the 16 inmates of the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre who donated $289.01 to the Fund. To put this donation in perspective, their wages for prison work tend to be less than $5 per day. The chaplain of the Centre, Rev. Canon Kevin Arndt explained that the donors have lived on the margins, feeling like they don’t belong, and they know what it’s like to be in need. “This was an opportunity for them to be a part of something positive and bigger than themselves,” Arndt said. As he observed, it’s powerful “when people give not out of their wealth, but they give out of their poverty.”

When we’ve on the other side of side-isolation, hopefully we’ll keep using the resources we’ve unearthed. We’ve been thinking of The Plague by Albert Camus as the book for the times, but we have as much to learn from The Little Prince. Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” When times are flush and the foliage is blooming, we take our wells for granted. A drought forces us to dig into our reserves. Thanks to COVID-19 we are finding deep wellsprings we might never have seen if we hadn’t been forced to look.