The Current - Five years later, how did the pandemic change our lives?

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

It’s been five years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, completely upending life as we knew it. We reconnect with some of the people we spoke to in those early days of lockdown, to ask where they are now and how the pandemic changed their lives.

In the summer of 2021, Tabatha Pope was living out of a cheap motel. So when she stumbled onto an affordable apartment, she thought her luck was finally turning around. She was wrong. And as she's cleaning, she comes across a few rubber-made buckets. And they look to be filled with blood. I'm Kathleen Goltar, and this week on Crime Story, the most horrific rental story you've ever heard. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Five years ago this week, the world started to shut down. The NBA suspended its season right before a game, citing what we were then calling the novel coronavirus. For many people, that was the unofficial beginning of the unimaginable months to follow. Earlier that same day, March 11th 2020, an official announcement. We're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.

Canada soon shut its borders, including the land border, to the United States. Travelers will no longer be permitted to cross the border for recreation and tourism. In both our countries, we're encouraging people to stay home. Stay home. Physical distancing, porch parties, sourdough bread baking, online school, window visits, empty streets, banging pots and pans for the frontline health care workers. Those early months of the pandemic were scary and represented a monumental shift in all of our daily lives. And in many ways, five years later, we are still living in a world that COVID built from how we work to politics to health care to our connections with other human beings. in all of our daily lives. And in many ways, five years later, we are still living in a world that COVID built,

from how we work to politics to healthcare to our connections with other human beings. And so to mark that anniversary, we are bringing back some of the people we spoke with in the early days of the pandemic to hear how it affected them and to hear how their lives are now. And we start with Sarah Matre.

She was one of the many students who did not get to fully experience her high school graduation because of COVID. And so The Current held a special show dedicated to the grads of 2021. Sarah was valedictorian of her class that year at Springbank Community High School in Calgary. Sarah, good morning. Good morning, Matt.

How are you? It's really nice to hear your voice again. Um, go back to that last year of high school during COVID. How tough was that? It was definitely a challenge. I kind of felt like it was like walking in a dream. It didn't feel like real school weeks just in class, at home. There were days I'd come to school and there would be no teachers and there'd be no substitutes. And so the grade 12s, we would just have an empty classroom

because everyone was out sick and it didn't feel like a real graduation, that's for sure. You did graduate and you went on to do a number of different things, including you're studying finance at University of Calgary, but you have lots on the go, right? You also have a singing career. Tell me about Sarafina Ellen. Yeah, so I was supposed to be named Sarafina. My mom was like, that's a beautiful name, but she said I would end up too pretentious and we just call me Sarah anyway. And so I decided that my stage name

would have to be Sarafina and then Ellen being my middle name. And so back in fall of 2023, I decided to, you know, push myself out of my comfort zone and attend the University of Calgary open mic. But I didn't know what song I would do. I knew I wanted to sing. And I have the same haircut as Taylor Swift. So I got dressed up in a full Taylor Swift costume. And I did a one to one recreation of one of her performances, recorded it, and it went viral on TikTok. And now I've been lucky enough to actually, you know, do shows as Taylor Swift, while also being able to raise money to produce my own songs and

get performance opportunities. And it has been, it's been great. You have a hundred thousand followers on TikTok? That's right. Just hit a hundred thousand today, actually. That's awesome. How did you mention your mom? How did your mom influence your decision to get into singing? your mom influence your decision to get into singing? So back in 2016, she was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, and she was only expected to live one year.

And so in that time she decided she needed to do as much as she could. She had so many dreams about being a writer and an inspirational speaker and a painter. And she was like, I have my timeline. I need to get this done. And so she ended up doing all of those things. And she added kickboxing and modeling to the list. And she ended up living for another seven years. And I think it was due to the fact that she always pushed herself to go outside her comfort zone. And so when she passed away, the, you know, summer of 2023, I decided that I needed to, to follow her

example. And I needed to sing because I love singing. I'm kind of, I was kind of bad at it, but it was something that I would regret not doing if I hadn't done it. And it's better to feel that discomfort and anxiety rather than regret for never doing it. She'd be really proud of you. I hope so. I mean, this is what you talked about in that valedictorian speech, right? Aside from wearing, I think it was like the neon

platform crocs that you were wearing. That's right. But you also talked about how important it was for others to embrace the things that would bring them happiness without being, being worried that somebody was going to judge them. A hundred percent. I think, you know, post COVID, I think everyone

has become so reserved and comfortable being isolated even in themselves. And I think it's so important to even just remind us just, it is okay to be more than what you are comfortable in. So aside from being a star, what else are you gonna do in the future? I'm not sure. I like that it's open. I think I said this last time. But right now, my dreams are, well, first to graduate, and then I want to go on a tour. And I have this dream of playing a big, glamorous show in Las Vegas. It was my mom's favorite city, and so I wanna play one sparkly show in Las Vegas. When you play the big, glamorous shows

all across the country, you'll remember us, I hope, and you'll come back when you are the big star. 100%. Excellent. Sarah, it's great to talk to you again. Thank you very much. It was great talking to you. Sarah Maitreyi is a finance student

at the University of Calgary and also a singer, as you heard, with 100,000 followers on TikTok who performs under the stage name, Seraphina Ellen. The area that we come into, that's kind of gated off. I don't necessarily take all my clothes off right there on the spot, but I leave all my, I leave my badge, my pager, my cell phone, all of those types of things there and then enter the house. I go and I immediately change, you know, and then from there I sanitize all of that material

before I bring it into the house. And again, we keep that area sort of gated off from the kids. That's Dr. Alex Wong describing the routine he went through every day when he got home from the hospital in April of 2020. Dr. Wong is an infectious diseases doctor at Regina General Hospital. Dr. Wong, good morning to you. Thanks. Glad to be back, Matt. It's good to have you back on the program.

We heard you describing that routine when you got home. Take me back to that. What does that bring back for you? Honestly, it kind of feels like it was yesterday in a lot of ways. We're still in the same house, slightly different vehicle. But you know, in some ways, it feels like it never almost happened. But at the same time, there are obviously a lot of, you know, memories, good and bad, you know, from those two, three years.

So we've learned a lot. But you know, my family and I are still here doing well and very grateful for what we have. Your wife was pregnant at the time and you had small children at home. How worried were you about getting them sick? You know, there was a lot of anxiety because there was a lot of uncertainty. We didn't know really what we were dealing with

and there was a lot of, you know, lack of clarity. So I think we were all just trying to take appropriate precautions to try to, you know, keep the family safe, keep each other safe, keep everybody around us safe. And as we, you know, gained more information and learned more about the virus, became more clear sort of what to do and what not to do. And so some of those pieces kind of moved away, you know. So but those first couple months were challenging just with all the uncertainty

and just trying to manage all of that. So, you know, I think we were all just trying to do what we could in order to be cautious, both in the healthcare side, you know, but at home as well. I remember you telling me that, I mean, one of the things we were all just trying to figure this out and it was scary and, and as you said, unknown that you woke up at three o'clock in the morning and went out and cleaned your car, sanitized your car because you were worried that perhaps you hadn't done that and you were worried that you may have left something that would

impact your family. Yeah. I remember that too. And I remember doing it. I remember telling you about it like five years ago and, um, you know, these are just kind of normal reactions. And I think it's just, it's, it's a reminder

that, you know, we're all human. We all have our fears and anxieties. I was certainly not immune to any of that. And as we move through the pandemic, you know, again, I tried to sort of balance all of that with, you know, the science and the evidence. And I tried to help advocate and support, you know, sort of that knowledge as we kind of went forward

so that the public could try to help make some good decisions and the people around me could try to help make some good decisions and the people around me could try to help make some good decisions as well. We talked a lot about the mental and emotional toll that this pandemic took on people like yourself who are right at the front lines. How do you think about that phrase moral injury now? That was something that we spoke a lot about back then.

Yeah, I think we spoke about it at least a few times and I think my colleagues as well. I mean, it really, at a fundamental few times and I think my colleagues as well. I mean it really at a fundamental level for those of us on the front lines it kind of boiled down to this sense of helplessness in a time where things were just so difficult. So there were different dynamics back in sort of early 2021 when things were just starting to move forward with vaccine we thought if we could just get through this wave and, you know, get everybody vaccinated, that that would really kind of be the end of it, or it wouldn't be so bad.

And then as we moved later into 2021, where it became a bit more challenging and where some of the messaging and decision-making between sort of the public health pieces and the policy pieces started to diverge a bit, that's when it also got extremely challenging as well because I think there were many, many times for all of us, in all healthcare settings, not just in Canada

and North America, but around the world, where we felt that some of the policy decisions and some of the other decisions which were far above us, were leading to some of the outcomes we were seeing and some of the tragic outcomes we were seeing. And that degree of helplessness, I think, made it really hard for many people. And so that's not just for folks on the front lines, but for people sort of leading and

trying to kind of move all this forward. It felt very difficult at times and like a bit of an uphill battle. We would steal your time to get to talk to you about what was going on. And there were many people like yourself who became public figures in some ways, appearing in the media and speaking about this. And then you decided to take a step back from that, right? I did. And I, you know, it wasn't for any reason other than for the fact that I just was tired. Like it was just a lot of time and a lot of energy.

I felt a degree of personal and a lot of energy. I felt a degree of personal and professional responsibility to try to be as updated as I could and to try to make, you know, sort of good sort of decisions about what to say and how to try to guide and to also be clear about the uncertainty when it existed. But yeah, I mean, all of this, you know, took a lot of time, took a lot of energy, took a toll. I had some physical issues and so forth, needed to step back. It wasn't because I regretted anything that I did in terms of the public service and advocacy.

It was a tremendous privilege. I wouldn't take any of it back. And if I had to do so again, I would. But if I don't have to ever do it again, I wouldn't shed a tear, Matt. One of the reasons why, and I think that's fair, totally fair, it was exhausting. And I think one of the reasons that people look back

on this time is to wonder whether we learned anything from that. And if you take a look at the state of healthcare now, what do you see in terms of what we did or didn't learn? I kind of was thinking about this question and thinking about how to be positive. And you know, I think there's a lot of good work that's still being done in our health care systems.

There's still a lot of really, really good people. But man, COVID really, you know, did a lot that was not positive and negative in many ways. I think it took a lot of our good people, you know, some of our very best people who work so hard from a leadership perspective, and from a frontline perspective, and those people just needed to step back or just or leave or retire, just kind of move away. You know, so there's just like the human resource piece of kind of what COVID and the pandemic did to us. But, you know, I mean, some of the best things we did during during COVID were, you know, the system was agile, was able to adapt, like think about how fast we were able to get vaccines out, you know, and just kind of make things

happen and that's the sort of stuff, you know, where it's like we can all look at each other and say, you know what, we're working together, we're making a difference, you know, we're not dealing with, you know, taking years and years to kind of have decisions happen. And so now we're sort of in this kind of morass to some degree where there's, you know, there's just a lot of challenges. There's human resource challenges, there's administrative challenges,

there's obviously financing and budgeting challenges. And that's led to the current state of affairs, you know, in healthcare, which is just kind of a bit of a reflection of kind of how the world is. And so that's not to say that we can't continue to try. And that's what we do in our setting day to day, working hard to support people that don't have a voice

and need to be able to receive that support, but it is a challenging time. And we've lost a lot, I think, and taken some steps back in terms of public health, in terms of trust in the system and so forth. And it's going to take some time and honestly a lot of energy, I think, probably to try to get all that back. I'll let you go, but do you feel like it changed you? You know, I think it changed me for the better and to have the opportunity to do things like this and to speak with you

and to advocate and so forth was a privilege that I'll always be thankful for. So I'm never going to take that for granted and I appreciate it. I really appreciate you being willing to, it's not something that people want to look back on in some ways. We're asking you to go back to a really difficult time, but I appreciate you doing that and appreciate what you did back then. Alex, thanks. Take care, Matt.

Dr. Alex Wong is an infectious diseases physician at Regina General Hospital. An intense battle, a lively debate, fierce competition. his physician at Regina General Hospital. Our host Ali Hassan and our fantastic lineup of panelists are ready to defend their books to the end. You can listen to Canada Reads 2025 wherever you get your podcasts. Show week is March 17th to the 20th. Until then, happy reading Canada. Alright, let's do this. One, two, three, go! What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? So we did this thing in April of 2020. Choir Choir Choir is this incredible group

that brings people together to sing en masse. And they would do it in a public setting with a lot of people, of course, during the pandemic. They couldn't do that. And so we had a virtual sing-along. We asked Canadians coast to coast to coast to send in their voice recordings and we created the Canadian version of a little help from our friends. And that song in many ways describes the bond that forms between our next two guests that year. Asher Rose and Yolanda Bonnell were on our program at the end of 2020 to tell us about a ritual

that they had started, a daily check-in to make sure that the other was doing okay. What do you know? That ritual continues today. Asher, Yolanda, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Matt. Asher, what do you remember about this time five years ago?

I was just looking at my photos from five years ago on my phone, leaving work and the streets of downtown Toronto were totally empty at two o'clock in the afternoon. What do you remember about this time five years ago, Asher? I remember going to the grocery store to stock up and the aisles being empty and having a piece of cloth tied around my face and not knowing what to get, thinking, am I supposed to get flour? Am I supposed to get beans and non-perishables and toilet paper and that doesn't seem to be an option? Marshall Sikorski What am I going to do with all these beans?

Elana Poindexter Yes, exactly. I don't think I ever used them. But just feeling this overwhelming sense of kind of despair and anxiety in this apocalyptic landscape in my own neighborhood. Yolanda? Yeah, very similar. I was actually out of the country when the news broke. So my concern was like, oh no, am I even going to be able to get back into the country? But yeah, it was very similar. I remember the first time leaving my house was just anxiety filled and it was like a

wasteland. There's nobody outside and it was so eerie. I just remember the unsettling feeling and then standing in line waiting to go inside of the metro. Yeah, it was just something had shifted in a way that I had never experienced before. It was really isolating as well, right? I mean, you really did feel alone in those days. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And I lived alone too, like Asher lives alone as well. And so like it was incredibly isolating, not being able to like see family and friends. And when I finally did, it was like, I would burst into tears when I did see them. It had been so long. Asher, one of the reasons why, um, people were trying to figure out how to connect was because

we were all alone. Um, you started these check-ins. Tell me how, how did this begin? So it began just a couple of months before lockdown did in December of 2019. And Yolanda and I were at the holiday party for artists and staff at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. And after a few drinks, we were kind of joking around just talking about being artists who

were single and both lived very happily alone. But because of our work as freelancers, you know, there's no office where we're each expected to show up each day. And this kind of dark joke began of, wow, who would notice if we didn't show up one day? And what started as sort of a slightly anxious joke became, well, wouldn't it be great if we just checked in every day, you know, just to make sure that the other one hasn't croaked at any point. And the next day we did it. I texted Yolanda, just, I think the words, so are you alive? And she said, I'm alive. And we've been doing that now for almost five and a half years. Yolanda, what did that mean? During the lockdown, what did those check-ins mean? Oh, it was, oh my gosh, it was like, it was a life line. I think especially because so many of us

were struggling with mental health and those aspects were exacerbated because of the lockdown. So having someone reach out every single day to check in and make sure that you're alive, but not just that you're alive, but it sort of comes with a how are you doing caveat, right? What's going on in your day? And I don't think, it's very rare, I think, for people who do live alone or single

to have a daily check-in because you're not waking up with somebody, you know, like, so being able to like get like a, are you alive? And me being like, I'm alive, are you alive? Like, do you live today? It's a lifeline, it really, really is. Asher, why are you still doing this?

You could go and knock on Yolanda's door and say hello, which you might do, but you're still doing this check-in. Why are you still doing that? Yes. Well, because it allows us to keep it consistent. You know, we both, I'm an actor, Yolanda's a director, writer, dramaturg. We both travel for work. Our schedules are both very inconsistent.

So, you know, often you go weeks, sometimes months, without seeing the people who are dearest to you, even when the world is normal, as normal as it ever is. But because we started doing these texts every day, we were able to keep it consistent the people who are dearest to you even when the world is normal, as normal as it ever is. But because we started doing these texts every day, we were able to keep it consistent. And in a way, it's still a lifeline even though we have access to our other communities, even though we're back in our work and out creating art and living the lives that we're hoping to live. We have this opportunity to be consistent and to check in with each other every day and to provide each other with some care every day.

And I think it's the every day that's the important part. That is not just dark times. It's not just during the worst, but it's actually every day. Exactly. And it's being able to celebrate the wins and the losses and also just know that somebody is there and rooting for you and that they're going to ask you every single day how you're doing and care about the answer. Yolanda, what does this mean to you?

I was going to call it a ritual, but it's more than that, right? There's something else that's going on there. What does it mean to you? Yeah, it's the same, like it's very similar. Like I, it really speaks to how we care for each other in community. And something Asher had said yesterday was, you know, talking about how, how this has sort of amplified how we care for each other, what, what mutual aid can look like, because like part of these check-ins are not just like, if one of us is doing particularly bad,

we'll send each other food, do you need a meal today? And this sort of has gotten us both, I think, in a place where we know better now how to care for our friends and our loved ones, our family members, how we distribute that sort of care and mutual aid amongst our community. So it's sort of amplified just how we care about each other. And that was a big thing, you know, this whole we're all

in it together motto that sort of came from it. And I think in our communities, it really was amplified throughout this being able to like sort of check in with each other every day. I just love the fact that it's continued. You know that there are people who heard that and thought maybe, I wonder whether they're still in touch with each other. And it turns out they are every single day.

It's so great. Thank you both for being here and thanks for staying in touch with us. Thank you so much, Matt. Have a great day. Hey Asher, do you live? I live. Do you live? I live. Hooray. That's the actor and writer Asher Rose and the artist Yolanda Bonnell.