Travel trouble
Rotational worker says suspended flights negatively affect families
SYDNEY — She was six jeep payments behind and unsure how she'd keep providing for her son when single mother Vicky McNeil decided to leave New Waterford for work.
Now McNeil isn't sure how she'll make her two-week turnaround from two hours north of Fort McMurray work with no flights into Sydney after Jan. 11.
"(After Tuesday's announcement by Air Canada) I was like what am I going to do? How am I going to make this work? Do I wait months until I see my son?" said McNeil, 33, who is the sole provider for her four-yearold son.
"Do I move out of Cape Breton and take him away from my mom, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother?"
Before the pandemic hit, McNeil ran her own business called Mindful Motion Fitness. Along with fitness training, McNeil taught yoga and was a nutrition coach helping people learn how to plan healthy meals.
She also specializes in working with seniors and people with disabilities, which often brought her into their homes. However, along with gym closures, home fitness appointments were cut. McNeil tried to survive by moving online but realized quickly it wasn't economically feasible.
"I was on CERB (the Canadian Emergency Response
“You’re isolating the workers from their families, the people who want to stay in Cape Breton. That is why we go away to work — so we can stay.”
Vicky McNeil
Benefit) for a while and I would have been frigged without it but it really just keeps you out of collections," she said.
"It was heartbreaking (to have to leave for work.) I feel like an absent mom. But it was that or not providing the essentials for my son to live a happy, healthy life."
Able to return to her previous job in Alberta as a recreation and fitness co-ordinator in the management team at a gym located at a camp for employees of an oil and gas company in Alberta, McNeil made the hard decision to leave her son Otis with her mother for the two weeks she was away.
"It was heartbreaking to leave him. I feel like an absent mom," McNeil said, the pain in her voice heard through the phone.
"But it was that or not provide the essentials that he needs to live a happy, healthy life."
FLIGHTS HALTED
Earlier this year, Westjet suspended all their flights into Sydney due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Air Canada suspended their Halifax-Sydney flights for the same reasons and on Tuesday, announced they were doing the same with their Toronto-Sydney flights, which was the last commercial flight going into and out of J.A. Douglas McCurdy Sydney Airport. Without these flights, McNeil said her two days of travel home and back to camp on her 14 days off will now be four days due to the drive from Halifax. Plus, she estimates an extra $700 cost because on top of flights, she'll be paying for car rental, gas, drop off fee for travel from Halifax and back, and hotels when needed.
"Coming home, you're looking at up to 24 hours of travel with no sleep and then you have to drive from Halifax to Cape Breton. I know what my body can handle and I can't do that. I'll have to sleep in Halifax before hitting the road to Cape Breton," she said.
"There's a few people (at the camp I'm at) who are from Cape Breton and we're just in shock and awe really at this reality ... I just feel like they can't do this to Cape Bretoners or even any of the people in the Maritimes."
McNeil isn't alone. She knows of parents who aren't able to go home because the costs will be too much and McNeil estimates after Jan. 11, a trip home will cost her a full paycheque — something she's not sure she can afford.
"After this upcoming turnaround, I'm going to start separating my trips home. So every second one I'll go home to see my son. That means I won't see Otis for six weeks," McNeil said.
"It's either that or relocate him out here with me, away from everything he's ever known in his life."
The Cape Breton Post spoke to other rotational workers who said they are also considering not going home on their days off or declining upcoming contracts due to the flight suspensions.
McNeil said she doesn't understand how the airlines can cancel all flights into Cape Breton and believes it's a move that will be "economically devastating" to the island.
"I understand that we are going through a pandemic but I can't understand how you can take away flights from an already suffering island and isolate it," she said.
"You're isolating the workers from their families, the people who want to stay in Cape Breton. That is why we go away to work — so we can stay."