The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Weekend Special #11 -- More From You As We Carry On

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Thoughts, questions and comments from you after 77 days since we started the Bridge Daily.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the Bridge Daily. This is the weekend special number 11. Can you believe it? 77 days have passed since our first bridge daily on COVID-19. Lots of things we've talked about over that time. Lots of different emotions have hit the airways. Lots of different information. And every Friday with the weekend special, we've given you the opportunity to have your say,

your thoughts and your questions and your comments on any aspect of this story that you wish. And your thoughts and questions and comments have been terrific. And I've said, you know, many times to many people that there must be something about podcasts because it seems to draw out from people some pretty thoughtful comments about whatever the issue may be,

and in our case, it's in COVID-19, and I love reading your mail. Now, a couple of things before we get to your mail. One thing in particular is Monday night, there will be no podcast. All right, I'll be taking Monday off because I'm helping my son, Willie, move apartments. He has spent most of his time, as have we here in Stratford,

over these last, whatever it is now, three months. But, you know, he's got a job. He's still working. He's also at U of T, and he's going into his fourth year, and so there's a lot of stuff at play. And while the U of T is still deciding in some cases, where it looks pretty much like most things this fall will be online, there's still some sense that there could be some at school classes. And if there are, obviously he's got to be there.

And he wants his own place. He's at that age where he wants his own place and he can afford it seeing as he's got his job. So I'm going to help move some stuff for him on Monday. And as a result, I won't be doing a podcast on Monday. Unless, you know, something incredible happens and we'll find some way to do it. But the planning at the moment is after today,

I won't see you again or hear you again or you won't hear me until Tuesday alright so as has always been the case on Fridays I get at your mail and

select a certain number of them that will end up going on the podcast. And it's never really been that hard because there are lots of good ones. I pick out certain parts of the letters. Most of you write long letters. Not all of you, but most of you write long letters. And therefore, I try to just isolate, and you may not find it fair,

but I try to just isolate part of it and go with that and then move on to the next letter. However, there's always one or possibly two that get all of it read. And I save that to the end. And it's because I find all the letters good that make it onto the podcast.

The ones at the end have kind of a special touch to them. And they certainly do again this week. All right. So that's kind of where we are on setting this up. They come at you in no particular order, other than those ones at the end that I saved to the end. But other than that, they could have come at any time during the week. So let's get cracking here.

First out of the mailbag is from Emily Heiss. I grew up in the 1960s, and my teenage years were the 1970s. Best of times. My family was not wealthy, lower middle class. My dad worked for a rubber plant in Welland, Ontario. Each summer, our family of seven, five kids, packed up the maroon Mercury station wagon with a mile-high car top and went camping from one end of Canada to the other. All my siblings agree our summers were the best part of our childhood.

But let's break this down. Six to seven hours of a family of seven plus two cairn terriers confined in a station wagon. Eight hours each night, a family of seven and two dogs, sometimes wet, slept in a nine-by-nine canvas tent. Sounds painful, but not only do we remember the places and scenery we saw, we mostly remember the fun. We bonded stronger than most and found ways to make our fun. Car games, campground exploration, hiking, beaches, wildlife, and rainy day card games, all added to our memories. My point, much like isolation and quarantine, we spent most of our days in a station wagon and tent as we traveled to Vancouver Island and to Prince Edward Island. Yet we all agree this was the best part of our childhood.

I just want to remind patients and foster parents and grandparents and caregivers, it truly is the best of times in our children's eyes. Embrace. They will and can remember this as the best memories. Thanks, Emily. You know, it made me think of my childhood car rides with the family. It weren't quite as memorable as yours, but they were fun. Smaller family. You know, my mom and dad,

my sister and I, my little brother hadn't come along yet, we'd pile into our little car and head from our home, which at that point was in Ottawa, mid-50s, and taking the big adventure, we were going to drive to Maine, a drive which today takes, you know, less than a day. In those days, it took three days with two whining kids in the back. You know, we weren't exactly fighting,

but there was a lot of turf wars going on in the backseat. My mother was relatively patient. She's gone now. My dad, he was always patient to a point. And then you'd see him turn around, and that wasn't pleasant. My dad would have been 102 today. And we all remember him so fondly.

Happy birthday, Dad. I know you're listening somewhere. Marilyn Sewell from Paris, Ontario. Marilyn basically writes about some of the conversations she's been having with friends and the good times and difficult times

and the hilarious times they've had talking but she includes and this is the part I'm going to read because you know I'm big on quotes of famous people she's included one I didn't know about. Eleanor Roosevelt. That's what she said.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. Great minds discuss people. Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. That's so good. You know, you might want to drop that one at the dinner table tonight.

When they start talking about people. Okay. Joel Demby. Joel Demby from Toronto. I'm a retired Paralympic wheelchair tennis athlete now working in the financial sector. My wife and I have really enjoyed listening to your podcast. I thought I'd pitch you my big idea for your show.

It's a bit long, but I can shorten things up. Well, don't worry, Joel. I've shortened them up even more. But some great thoughts here. Ask anyone who uses a mobility device and does their own retail or grocery shopping. They will tell you that it can truly be an exercise in patience. The process of finding a fully accessible storefront, navigating transit or parking, not to mention lifting items into a cart, all while using a wheelchair at the same time, always made it a difficult routine for me. When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, many businesses, both large and small, had to pivot their shopping experiences to a delivery and pickup model in order to remain open. And while

major Canadian grocery and retail chains have done this fairly well over the past few years, including some who foresaw us moving to a delivery option well into the future, it was not quite yet omnipresent in our society. In my view, COVID-19 has pushed forth this model ahead by a few years. Many of us, especially those without a disability, are now relying on much easier ways to purchase goods in an easier, safer environment on a regular basis. And this other point that Joel makes. For those of us who rely on personal support workers, PSWs, in our daily lives, we're now reconciling with the fact that this group has too often been undervalued and overworked. With long-term health care facilities currently facing a national crisis, I truly hope that this pandemic will inspire our government

to take action to better support these workers. COVID-19 has exposed far too many stories of PSWs who have died because of their commitment in helping to support our disabled and elderly population. As Canada continues to age, we need to better support these diverse and often heroic group of workers. And Joel concludes this way, we simply need more compassion and empathy.

We need it from business, community, and political leaders if we're going to get through the next few years together. And clearly, we need it now more than ever. So let's push forward as a nation, take care of one another, and continue to speak up for inclusion. Thanks, Joel. Patricia Thomas.

Seems like everyone is saying that when we have a vaccine, that we will be able to get back to normal. But there may never be a vaccine. We have many viruses around for which that no vaccine has been found. AIDS, 40 plus years, no vaccine. SARS, another coronavirus, no vaccine. Even the flu vaccine is a hit or miss depending on the year due to mutations. The narrative needs to change to how we're going to live with the virus. Lockdown cannot go on forever. Pinning humanity's hope on a vaccine is a bit irresponsible as it may never happen. Does that mean we should be cavalier? No, but we need to start thinking about how we're going to continue on with living. And living with germs and viruses

and bacteria and disease is part of the human experience. I agree, Patricia. Listen, we can hope for a vaccine. There's no guarantee there'll ever be one or the timetable in which it will be available if there is one. We can hope that there will be therapies that can help prevent, not prevent, but ease the difficulties of a virus, a disease like COVID-19. But your point's well made. Lindsay Jenkins writes, and if you remember the name Jenkins, you might because Lindsay's dad wrote to me from Mississauga a few weeks ago looking for, you know, he'd heard me talking about the books I was reading. He wanted to get the names and the authors and give him some ideas.

So I gave him three and he got them and he's been reading them. So Lindsay writes, as Father's Day is coming around, I thought I'd reach out and see if you could provide me with a small list of book recommendations for me to purchase my dad for a Father's Day gift. I hope this would be possible as I know a book plus a list provided by you would be greatly appreciated. Well, thanks, Lindsay. You know, I'm not going to give you a list, but I will give you one name of an author who's written lots of books. So you could either pick up his latest or you could pick up two or three of them. All the authors of the books that I mentioned to your dad were not Canadian. This author is a Canadian, and he's really good.

He's a historian, and he sat with me on television programs in the past, helping guide our coverage on big important history days, like Remembrance Day and like the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge just a few years ago. His name is Tim Cook. And if you know anything about Canadian history, you know that name. He's great on our military history. He's written books on the First World War and the Second World War and on soldiers in general. And he has, his latest one out is The Fight for History. And it's basically about the Second World War.

And written this year, the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. And it too is a great book. Tim is meticulous on the way he writes and the facts he puts in. So, Lindsay, if your dad cares about Canadian history, then he will love a gift of a Tim Cook book, or maybe a couple of Tim Cook books. Val Cormier from Vancouver. She writes this.

And she wrote this, she was inspired to write this after listening to that whole controversy around the Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto and the zoo that was created last weekend and all the concern that was expressed afterwards that thousands of people totally ignored physical distancing and were far too close to each other in the park. By the way, when we dealt with this on the podcast on Monday night, I concluded by saying, why don't they just put some circles on the ground like they did in San Francisco, which ensured that people had to stay within the circle and therefore were socially distant from the

next circle. Guess what they did yesterday? They put circles in the ground at Trinity Bellwoods. I'm not suggesting they got it from me because I was hardly the first one to suggest it. But wherever they got it, they got it, and they put it there. They've put circles in the ground there, and they should probably do it in a few other places too. And other parts of the country may consider it. And here's the best part of the story. Guess where the machine that paints those circles in the parklands comes from.

Give you five seconds. Where do you think that machine comes from? Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. That's right. Stratford, Ontario. That's where the painting machine comes from. So good for them. Anyway, Val's letter.

This is the part that interested me. Remember, she's in Vancouver. We continue to have some issues on city beaches and large groups of young people. Overall, yes, the majority attempt social distancing. The larger the group, though, the less successful the attempt. If they are even feigning an attempt. As time goes on, the you-can-do-it-you're-doing-a-great-job messaging seems to have less effect on the bored and frustrated young.

Thank you for pointing out that certain camera angles and lenses can make appropriately distant groups appear tightly packed. I was livid when I saw those first pictures of my local beach splashed across the national news. I knew they were not a fair representation of the story, and I resented media who were gunning for a controversy. Yes, I think that's an important point on being careful to assume everything about the pictures you see. I know this was a constant problem that we were always focused on at the National, trying to ensure that the pictures were, in fact, representative of what happened because the angle makes a huge difference. The shot makes a huge difference.

You can take a crowd at a protest and zoom in close and suddenly that crowd looks like pretty big and pretty menacing. You pull back wide and you realize, you know, it's not really that big a crowd. And so you want to make sure that wherever you're getting your information is giving you the context of what happens. And I think most places do, some not so much. Here's another quote.

David Oliver, our friend in Victoria, found this one and sent it along. And I'll just read the quote because it's from Churchill. And it's absolutely appropriate these days when we're having this discussion about vaccines and whether or not there is one. If there is one, who's going to get it? Who's going to pay for it? How widespread will the circulation of that vaccine be? And the same goes for, you know, therapy

solutions to help lessen the impact of the disease. Anyway, here's the quote from Sir Winston Churchill made in a speech to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1944. Here it is. The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. In other words, you come up with some amazing cure for something that is challenging the world, you make it available to everybody. Everybody. It's not a question of who gets it or whether they have to pay something for it.

They get it. Now, the final two letters. And they're long. But they're good. They're very different, although they come from the same province. Michelle Westers. She writes from Medicine Hat. Don't you love that name, Medicine Hat?

Boy, I remember when I was a kid, when we came to Canada in the 50s, and I used to look at a map of this big country that we'd moved to, and I'd look at the names, and the names I used to love were names like Medicine Hat, you know, Buffalo Jump, Swift Current, Moose Jaw, Drum Mailer, Alberta and Saskatchewan have some great names for towns and cities.

Anyway, let's get to Michelle Wester's letter. I'm a high school math teacher in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and have been meaning to write to you for some time. Since mid-March, when learning transferred to at home, I have set up a YouTube channel, record my math lessons and post them online, answer questions during the day, and have weekly online meetings with each of my classes. Period one meets on Monday, period two on Tuesday, etc., etc. I think this is the most amount of time I've spent working since I first began teaching 19 years ago. As I believe you mentioned previously on one of your podcasts,

the students who are self-motivated with support at home are continuing on. Most miss their friends and would rather be back at school, while some have discovered that they prefer the flexibility of setting their own schedule. It's definitely an added challenge for those who are learning the English language, who require additional support, and or who just struggle with this method of online delivery for various reasons. The two biggest challenges for me have been trying to obtain valid assessment data, as well as the extraordinary amount of screen time this requires. However, what I wanted to write to you about, specifically, are my weekly online class meetings.

This was so new to everyone that next to no direction was given. So in the early days, us teachers struggled to even use the technology. Thankfully, our students fared better than us. One of my first grade 12 meetings turned into a spontaneous show-and-tell of pets. It reminded me of kindergarten in a heartwarming way. This is not the sort of thing that typically happens in an academic high school math course, but it was evident that the desire for sharing and connection doesn't change no matter the age. We got into a rhythm as the weeks passed, beginning to focus more on curricular content, and then Alberta began to open up. In the past two weeks, I've had one student join the meeting from the middle of a lake on a paddleboard, one while driving a tractor,

two of my exchange students who'd returned to Germany in March FaceTimed in. Some show up immediately following their workout. Some set their alarm to wake up for the 1 p.m. start time, and many can no longer attend as they're now working. It's made me think this is the longest amount of time these students have ever been out of a school building for. While no one knows what will happen come fall, how do students now go back to arriving at 9 and leaving at 3.30? With many universities continuing online classes in September, will less students attend? What is the purpose of education today? As what we would typically

have said, the purpose was now shifted. I've had very little time to pause and reflect, but these thoughts keep surfacing in the busyness of my days. Food for thought that perhaps some of your other listeners will also enjoy pondering. Those are thought-provoking topics from Michelle. I think they're great, and we can all think about this because I'm pretty sure that when this is all over, whenever that is, that it's not going to go back to the way it was. Some of the things that we've had to do in the last three months we'll look forward to not having to do again. But some of the things we've done and learned about, we're going to want to grasp onto and use them as forces of change for the future.

Maybe some of what Michelle's talking will be in that category. Okay, time to move on. And as I said, this last one comes from Alberta as well, from Lacombe, Alberta, from Rhonda Clausen. I'm writing as a former health care aide who worked for five years in assisted living facilities in small towns Alberta. My love for seniors began as a candy striper volunteer in grade seven. I went into a long-term care facility and helped Porter residents to dinner and back to their rooms at Meals End.

I visited with them in their rooms and heard their stories. Like the military helpers of today, I too was shocked that some residents would be calling out for help and apparently ignored. Fast forward 30-plus years, and I decided to become a health care aid as it offered flexibility and work schedule around a busy family with five children. I took good training, worked at a top-notch facility where resident care was paramount. For example, we took in a 98-year-old

patient with an abscess on her lower back the size of my fist. She was basically sent to spend her last days, not expected to live. Protocol required her to be turned every two hours with bandage change and drainage of the wound twice a day. She went from death row to living a normal life again because of our care. The only thing that stopped her from getting out with other patients was that her family was too cheap to buy her a hearing aid so she could participate in conversations. And they didn't come visit either. Living in this small, close-knit community of which we were new residents,

I saw firsthand how a good facility runs. It is not just LTC that plays a role in the support of our seniors. It's TLC, the tender loving care that comes not just from staff, but also from the families. I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed family neglect. There seems to be a correlation between the involvement of family and the response of staff. And that is not to say we behave better as workers because we are being watched. Studies show that our health is affected by the number of healthy relationships we have. I've witnessed residents perk up when family comes and wither when they're lonely. Why do you think they cry out for hours,

help me? They're not really needing care, they are lonely. Staff knows this and must attend to those who need real help, either with toileting or getting ready for meals, receiving medications, or one of the many other tasks children seem unwilling or unable to do for their elderly parents. I worked in another facility where a man walked 30 minutes each way each day to visit his wife in care. While she often was not very responsive, he cared enough to be present. Where are these children? Visiting once a week, a month or less. We've all seen with COVID-19 how fun being without family and friends feels. Maybe we're getting a taste of our own medicine. I've also worked in facilities where the care by staff was not where I would have liked it to be. Staff there did not have a love for seniors, but

were there for the paycheck and did as little as possible, or scheduling was so poorly executed that it resulted in burnout. This is often why there are staff shortages. Managers would run ragged due to poor scheduling, and staff would call in sick or get exhausted, leaving those that showed up to do two people's work for one person's pay. This is unfair and becomes untenable, so the good ones quit to look for better opportunities. You talk about big ideas. Well, this is one area where we need some big ideas. How about some of the government funding that supports these long-term care facilities

go to families that are willing to care for their loved ones at home, but need financial support to do so. Something like the child tax credit, but a senior tax credit. This would reduce the numbers in care to those whose needs exceed that which a family can safely provide. There should also be laws that when someone is working two people's jobs, they should be paid some kind of premium rate to reflect the extra burden they carry. I do not look forward to what may be my fate in later years. I can only hope that by then, things will have changed.

Rhonda, writing from Lacombe, Alberta. Rhonda, you know, your letter is hard to read and it's hard to listen to, but it's important to do both. You know, we're going to be going through some very difficult times when this difficult time is over. And what we'll be going through is trying to understand what the hell was going on in some of these places, how it got that way, whose responsibility it was. You've given us a snapshot of your experience,

and it covers the whole gambit from what you saw. And it's important that you included families as well. The thought, and you're quite correct, you know, what we've witnessed is this terrible fact that in some cases elderly people were, you know, were not able to see their families in their final days because of COVID-19. But what you're telling us is that's not uncommon, even in times of when a pandemic to talk about the Canadian story. Well, you know, this one does too. It's harder than most of the ones I've read to listen to, but it is, well, it is Rhonda Clausen's reality. That's what she's seen.

And she's been in situations, obviously, that many of us, if not any of us, have been in before. She titled her letter, LTC versus TLC, long-term care versus tender, loving care. Thank you for that Rhonda. Alright, that concludes the weekend special for this week and week 11. Keep in mind what I said at the beginning of the podcast

today, there will be no podcast on Monday. I'll be busy on Monday, but it'll be back Tuesday. And look forward to being here to give it to you. Alright, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge Daily. I hope you have a good weekend. If you have

thoughts you want to send along my way, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com Have a great weekend. Remember, wash your hands, socially distance,

wear a mask, and get outside. Just be safe. Be well. We'll talk again next week. Bye for now.