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2020-07-31
A pamphlet given to all residences in Ottawa through the mail explaining that there is now a "Temporary Mandatory Mask By-Law in effect." It then goes on to explain other public health measures to be observed and the reopening of city services. There is also a panel which reads "For more information, please visit ottawa.ca or for service in any language of your choice, please call 3-1-1." translated into Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Farsi, Somali, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Inuktitut. The reverse is the same in French.
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2020-07-06
"And as B.C. settles into Phase 3 of its economic recovery plan, with businesses reopening and residents getting out in the summer weather to meet one another and enjoy the city, the boards — no longer needed to protect shuttered storefronts — live on as an open-air gallery in the same neighbourhood that inspired them."
A gallery of photos depicting an exhibit of works of art on wooden panels, some of which previously boarded up businesses during the total shut-down, dedicated to health care workers and hope during the pandemic. The exhibit was organized by the Vancouver Museum and is located in the popular Gastown neighbourhood.
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2020-07-04
A tweet, which has gone "viral" in which a woman films an encounter she had with the triage nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in Toronto where she says she went after suspecting she had broken a finger. As the staff in the video repeatedly tell her, Ministry of Health policy states everyone in hospital must wear a mask, and a hospital may refuse treatment to a patient who refuses to comply. The staff also repeatedly informs the woman filming in a health care centre is not permitted, under law, due to concerns for the privacy of other patients. While many are very angry with this individual, and government and the hospital have roundly condemned her behaviour, others in the comment section for this tweet agree with her and defend her.
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2020-06-24
A tweet from author Anne Thériault talking about the silver lining to the disruption to routine brought on by the pandemic. She and her son have been staying with her mother in Kingston instead of their home in Toronto.
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2020-06-22
Article discussing the statistics of racism and fear thereof towards people of Chinese descent in Canada during the pandemic.
"Community groups, individuals and some police departments have raised the alarm about harassment linked to the pandemic, but the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, Shachi Kurl, says the goal of the survey was to try and generate some empirical data on the issue.
'What we hear from Canadians of Chinese descent and Chinese ethnicity is, this is a real lived experience for significant numbers of them,' Ms. Kurl said in an interview.
'[The survey] really speaks to the depth and breadth and scope and true saturation of this experience.'
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2020-06-21
Article discussing the disproportionate number of temporary foreign workers infected with coronavirus and the efforts to mitigate this. The temporary foreign worker program has been controversial in Canada for years, for a number of reasons including condition and treatment of workers, immigration status, the employment of foreign nationals over Canadian residents and citizens etc. Like many societal issues the pandemic has brought the ethics and practice of the program to a flash-point.
"The outbreak has triggered heightened scrutiny of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program and the conditions in which foreign labourers live and work. In Ontario alone, more than 630 migrant farm workers have been infected with COVID-19; two men from Mexico – Bonifacio Eugenio Romero, 31, and Rogelio Munoz Santos, 24 – have died. The third worker who died is Juan Lopez Chaparro, 55; he had been coming to Canada since 2010 and is survived by his wife and four children, the Migrant Rights Network said in a release Monday.
"Federal Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough told The Globe and Mail last week that Ottawa will overhaul the temporary foreign worker program, including through more surprise inspections of working and living conditions at farms that employ migrant workers. Mexico had temporarily stopped sending more workers, until Canadian officials got a handle on the outbreaks and ensured people are properly paid while they’re in isolation."
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2020-06-09
Caption below the picture: "This is a Dairy Queen drive through in Canada where they social distance by using debit machines zip tied to a hockey stick. You can't make this up."
Canada seems to be innovating to still allow essential businesses to function safely. Curious to see if the US will follow suit, perhaps with baseball bats?
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2020-06-18
A news article discussing how a local independent theatre is making up loses and spreading cheer during the pandemic by offering up their marquee.
"According to The Gladstone Theatre, 'For $1 a character (maximum 80 characters), we will put your personalized message up on our stylish retro marquee. We will then take a picture of it and send it off to you to share with the world.'"
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2020-06-17
A news article discussing a journalist's experience switching from reporting on sports to volunteering for Food Banks Canada. the Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, left largely vacant by the shut down of professional sports, has been turned into a massive warehouse for the accumulation of goods for Canadian food banks which are seeing a shortfall in donations during the pandemic. There is also a shortfall in volunteers which is being filled by Blue Jays' staff and reporters among others.
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2020-06-17
A tweet from Keith Egli, Ottawa city councillor for Ward 9 (Knoxdale-Merivale) and Chair of the Board for Ottawa Public Health shared this image of a Lego Yoda wearing a mask with the caption "To protect those around you wear a mask you must ."
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2020-06-16
Tweet featuring the large balloon sculptures made now that their artist has time on his hands during quarantine.
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2020-06-11
People were anxious to find out whether or not their jobs would be classified as essential in response to the Coronavirus shutdown. One group who is instrumental in the race to find a cure are scientists and researchers working tirelessly to produce a vaccine. The Western Economic Division of the Canadian government wanted to say thank you to a team of those researchers.
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2020-06-15
Our formal front room is usually reserved for family gatherings or avoiding the noise if someone has the tv on too loud in the living room. While it has long also been a place where my dad drops his notebooks, newspapers, and articles he has printed off to read, in quarantine it has become his space even more than before. While I have taken up embroidery, my mom has been sewing masks for those in need, and my brother has retreated once more to his room to watch YouTube videos, my dad has turned back to reading. Most of my life he has only really read nonfiction: books on history, economics, and political biographies. But he has been retired for over 2 years now, and I think all the work-related reading has cleared his system, so he has begun to bring fiction back into circulation. His consumption of literature has also been increased by the fact that shipping fees have been waved on books for the last three months. I have never seen him read this much or enjoy it this much. He is keeping his books in a place of pride and easy access too, instead of gathering dust in the shelves in our basement office or under the coffee table. Usually the bay window in the front room holds only the wooden candlesticks my uncle made us, and maybe a seasonal decoration or two, but now they display his growing library as well. He’s had the time before now; being retired, but he had other options to occupy his time, like going out for coffee nearly daily or pursuing the hardware store. The pandemic kickstarted the habit which I think will be entertaining him going forward into a post pandemic world with spy novels and literature added to his biographies and political economy texts.
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2020-06-10
An public statement shared on Facebook by Kathleen Wynne and then by various childcare professionals and sympathetic parties. It was retrieved from the Facebook page of a Early Childhood Educator. Kathleen Wynne, a member of Provincial Parliament, former Premier of Ontario, and a former teacher, wrote this in response to action taken by Premier of the province of Ontario, Doug Ford and the Provincial Minister of Education, and Conservative government in the province, that they will reopen all childcare centres in Ontario effective Friday June 11, 2020 as part of their tiered 'reopening' of the province from Covid-19 restrictions. It is Ms. Wynne's opinion that centres are being provided with insufficient time and resources to do so safely for staff and children.
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2020-06-08
News article discussing a program providing seeds and gardening supplies to school children to provide fresh produce at home during quarantine, especially for those in underprivileged circumstances, and to allow for online group lessons on subjects such as horticulture, cooking, ecology. A particular and amusing challenge they are learning to face is the healthy local squirrel population eating their crops!
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2020-06-05
An infographic created by Ottawa Public Health ahead of a planned march to the US Embassy to protest racial injustice and police actions in the United States. It gives instructions meant to hopefully reduce the spread of the covid19 disease amongst the crowd
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2020-05-20
A sign taped up in an unknown store window expressing the staff's frustration and asking for kindness following incidents in which customers were rude to already overworked staff.
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2020-06-02
News story about a nurse's struggle to find daycare for her young son. Her son's previous daycare closed, perhaps permanently, he is far down the waiting list for emergency daycare for the children of frontline workers, and then a spot she did find him fell through when the parents of other children in the daycare, two of whom had weak immune systems and asked the carer not to take the child on as they feared he would carry covid19 to daycare from his mother's work at a hospital. She has not been able to work due to the unavailability of care, during a time when nurses are in high demand.
However, the article also mentions that after a story on the situation was aired on the nightly television news, the nurse received numerous calls offering to watch the child for her.
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2020-05-22
A tweet from Ottawa Public Health from during an exceptional heat wave warning that increased lines outside of stores and services due to physical distancing measures could expose people to the heat for longer than usual and that precautions should be taken to avoid heat related illness such as sun burn or heat stroke.
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2020-05-11
Photograph of signs in Bowring Park which read, "SITE SAFETY/ Wash your hands regularly/ Keep a safe distance of at least 2 metres/ Cough or sneeze into the crease of the elbow or a tissue/ Avoid contact/ Avoid touching your face/ Stay at home if you are ill/ St. John's" and "AVOID CROWDS AND MAINTAIN 2 METRE DISTANCE/ St. John's"
The image was taken for the Instagram account which follows two dogs in St. John's, Newfoundland, Lola and Georgia. The accompanying caption mentions that the park had previously been closed and was then reopening to the public.
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2020-05-29
The time honoured tradition of summer camp in northern Ontario, usually drawing children from across the country and around the world, especially the Northeastern United States is obviously not viable in its usual form during the pandemic but some camps are lobbying to be able to open nonetheless, with strict precautions, they say.
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2020-05-04
Attached to the permanent, metal private property sign at the edge of the yard of St. Thomas More Catholic School, is depicted a plasticized sign announcing that “Due to COVID-19 these school grounds are CLOSED except for walk through” by authority of the Ottawa Catholic School Board. In the background, across the grounds, at the basketball hoops attached to the school, three young men can be seen flouting the signs posted at several entrances in order to shoot hoops. Provincial restrictions have been relaxed since this photograph was taken, allowing for sunbathing and distant sports, such as tennis, in public spaces, however, the school grounds are private property and the signs remain. There has been an increase in activity around the basketball hoops since this announcement.
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2020-05-08
“The resiliency has been passed down to further generations, so we are able to survive these times of struggle.”
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2020-04-24
A post with photos of the food program implemented to supply food to kids in School District 52, Prince Rupert, BC. Photos show volunteers preparing over 200 hundred bags of food and gift cards for families struggling amidst school closures and stay-at-home orders. The post appeared on the Prince Rupert School District website.
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2020-04-09
A letter from the government of the Yukon to families outlining ways for them to speak to children and cope with both the medical and emotional needs of Covid-19. It offers ideas and techniques for normalizing lives and homeschooling students of different ages. It also gives descriptions of symptoms to look for, ways to teach students hygiene, and methods to prevent the spread of the virus.