January 3 2021

A new year has dawned upon the surface of our world. Hope has risen and they have started distributing vaccines to health workers and the most vulnerable. The time has come for us to embrace the lessons of the last year; lessons in patience, love, and in compassion. Will this new year end with everyone coming together again? I hope it ends differently than it has begun.

In many parts of the world 2021 began much like 2020 ended; in lockdown.

In our corner of the world in BC, we have the fortune to be relatively free from the most draconian restrictions. Restaurants are still open and businesses remain operating at limited capacity. Across Canada, some restaurants and bars have survived and continue to stay open. Unfortunately, many others have closed their doors forever. Places like the iconic Ranchman’s in Calgary closed its doors in the summer. In Kelowna The OK Corral couldn’t survive without customers, they couldn’t make it in a world without dancing. When this is over and we have achieved immunity to covid19 how many small businesses will return.

It was a year of new connections and new dreams. Two weeks after we went into our first lockdown I turned fifty. It was not the birthday I had planned and it was not the year I thought I would have. We had hopes of a quick end to the pandemic, hopes that it was a short-lived speed bump in the road of life. It would turn out to be a completely different road than I had mapped out only a few months earlier.

In early April everything was still new, I found the pause refreshing. I walked my street and weeded the garden. I connected with neighbours I rarely saw and some I never met in all the years of living here. April crawled along and traffic was good. The weather was great and it felt refreshing to live slower. I began a path that took me places I never expected. Life was good and very few people were dying in our part of the world. We felt untouched and blessed in BC.

May and June continued and the province eased many of the restrictions on business. Restaurants reopened; at first for take-out then for dine-in. We had a new vocabulary with phrases like ‘social distance’ and ‘new normal’ taking more of our conversations than ever expected. We watched our PM in the morning and Dr. Bonnie in the afternoon. Life began to become more ‘normal’ and traffic increased as people emerged from isolation.

The questions mounted, was the cure worse than the disease? What if we had done nothing?

In late June we found out we could safely take people on our boat with Luxury Lake Tours. Things were looking up. I had an awesome trip to the Kootenays and paddled a river with my brother. I was feeling connected to mother earth and the break our world was taking felt like it had come at the right time. July rolled in and I had the most amazing summer, riding my motorcycle to the dock to take people boating. 

Living the dream.

Like everything in life we ride the wave we’re on and make the most of staying on the top. My wave crashed down when the boat quit. Like most first-world problems I didn’t drown, I survived and I made the most of the rest of my summer. It was a good summer, one to remember, if not the one I planned.

First world problems indeed.

The worst problem I dealt with was how to help my teenage daughter deal with life in the coronaverse. She had what she called a coronabreak that lasted from March 10 until September 9. Now her generation had become addicted to technology. As parents, we are faced with the difficult task of figuring out how to get this group of teenagers to look at the real world long enough to be a part of it.

The dog days of summer crawled along, the weather was nice and it felt like things should be returning to normal. Yet we were awash with the threat of a second wave of viral infections. It wasn’t time to relax our guard, it was time for caution. More and more people were pushing back against restrictions, people cried out for freedom. It felt short-sighted and selfish of these people, our health care system may well depend on us making small sacrifices.

The reality of it all crashed upon me when one of my best friends passed from this world. It was a new low for me at a time when I was trying to stay positive. The only positive I could find in my sorrow was the fact I was there for him in the end, I held his hand and said goodbye.

Our world began to colour and the leaves began to fall. The seasons changed from green to red and yellow. Mother nature was oblivious to the changes being wrought on our society by malicious strands of RNA. The second wave began to crash upon our shores.

I felt a sense of peace inside knowing that I had found my path. I joined a writing class on Zoom and felt my first real connections using that format. Prior to that my relationship with Zoom was rocky at best. I avoided the news and tried to stay out of the rabbit hole that was facebook. As the days got shorter and the air began to chill I could sense the fatigue the world was feeling from the pandemic and the incessant news around it.

Not to mention the US election… which I won’t, because if it wasn’t for covid it would have been the only thing we heard about on the news. Suffice it to say Trump lost and Biden won… I think? I hope…

I stretched my writing legs as the days lazed onwards. I have been blessed with a second chance at my dream in life.

I will not let it go.

November winds blew into the Okanagan. Viral winds blew across the globe. December began with an extension of the two-week lockdown in BC beginning at the end of November. The dreaded second wave arrived with a vengeance in many parts of the world. Even in our safe bubble of BC Covid19 cases rose sharply. Unfortunately so did the numbers that matter; hospitalizations and deaths were on the rise. Christmas parties everywhere were canceled and we were told not to travel.

Thankfully, despite a cluster of covid cases, our mountain home of Big White stayed open. It was a good start in a ski season that’s like no other. I skied as many days as I could, reaching eleven swipes on my pass before disaster struck. I crashed; hard. I was very lucky and the brace on my knee saved me from serious injury. I had to stop, I had to wait and recover, I had to listen to the health experts. I had to stay at home.

At Big White and through BC we were listening to the experts, we wore masks and kept our distance. Ski the local mountains we were told, Big White canceled any ski trips that were coming from beyond 150km. I lost my lucrative New Year booking; another first world problem…

There was hope they told us, we had to have patience. A vaccine was being delivered. Stay home they said, don’t gather, the message blaring from the government was loud and clear. Strangely they didn’t listen to their own mantra.

Most people hunkered down away from their loved ones. Meanwhile, elected officials across the nation failed to practice what they preached. Across the country, a few clueless politicians chose to fly to warmer climes to enjoy the holidays. Now the repercussions are echoing across the country.

And they wonder why people are questioning all the measures in place to protect us.

As 2021 arises from the ashes of the past, much of the world goes back into lockdown to curb the spread of Covid19. In the midst of all the chaos, there is hope. The vaccine is being delivered and the election in the USA is on the verge of ending.

I am recovering from my mishap on the mountain. Tomorrow is a new day, one step closer to health. Our world is one step closer as well.

I hope society has learned from 2020. I know I have learned. I hope that when we say goodbye to 2021 we can gather together to watch fireworks light up the night and the future.