Let me out, I’ll be careful
In recent days, with varying degrees of subtlety, political cartoonists have been comparing the massive global anti-coronavirus campaign to the Second World War. Some of their work makes you wonder why anyone bothers printing it: Frontline medical workers are the Allies; COVID-19 is Hitler; zero insight provided. Some, however, more usefully keys in on the weirdness of the duty that so many of us are being called on to do: Stay home. That’s it.
I certainly would not trade what I’m being asked to do for, say, hurtling outmoded biplanes around Northern Europe in the early 1940s — which is what my grandfather signed up for 80 years ago. But as Canadian cities clamp down more and more on their citizens’ freedoms — padlocking sports fields, barricading parking lots at popular recreation spots, threatening arrest for those who perambulate recklessly — I feel like we’re in danger of underestimating just what’s being asked of many Canadians. “We’re all in this together,” I keep hearing. But “this” isn’t remotely the same for everyone who’s in it.
I am employed. I have everything I need in my apartment. I don’t have so much as a dog to walk, never mind kids to keep from going feral. I am not complaining. But that apartment comprises 500 square feet, and two wee windows. When I think about holing up here until July — a timeline Canadian politicians are unwilling to dismiss, and that may prove optimistic — it fills me with nothing short of genuine dread.
I would kill just to have access to a desk somewhere else, or the balcony I had in my previous apartment, never mind the semi-detached house I grew up in in Midtown Toronto that’s probably worth $2 million right now. I know how it would feel to ride this thing out on Heath Street East — barbecuing every night, chatting safely with neighbours over the fence — as opposed to in apartment 301. It’s night and day.
Now think about people in basement apartments or crummy public housing. Imagine when it gets hot, and folks don’t have air conditioning. Imagine being cooped up 23 hours a day with your kids in a stifling shoebox, relying on the same federal government that can’t manage its own payroll system to shepherd you through economic catastrophe. To keep people in such circumstances indoors by force, to denounce them even for taking a walk, to shut down schoolyards where kids could ride their bikes and scooters in at least relative safety, is to risk mental and physical health outcomes that should certainly be weighed against the risks of COVID-19 itself.
Here in Toronto, people are shamelessly accessing officially closed running tracks and sports fields. On Wednesday, a local news station showed a waterfront parking lot full of cars; their occupants were presumably enjoying a sunny walk along the lakeshore trail. On Thursday, Mayor John Tory announced giant concrete blocks that had previously been used to barricade illegal marijuana dispensaries would be deployed to close that parking lot, and any others necessary. He warned again of $750 fines for people accessing closed facilities. And he imposed by executive order a $5,000 penalty for being within two metres of an unrelated person in a public square or park. We have no reason to believe this is overkill. But at the same time, city staff demonstrated their trademarked total lack of imagination in their rejection of an idea to close off two lanes of Toronto’s Yonge Street — in the city’s densely populated but eerily quiet downtown — so that pedestrians could move about using mandated social distances. “Open streets” are designed “to bring people together,” a transportation services director told the Toronto Star, which “is the exact opposite of what we need to see right now.”
Funny thing about that: Yonge Street was designed for cars to drive on — yet, curiously, hardly anyone is driving cars on it. Perhaps pedestrians who need or want to get out for a bit could also be trusted not to use the space as originally intended? Calgary closed a whole whack of lanes and entire streets for pedestrians last weekend. There were no reports of dirty dancing, kissing booths or other high-risk behaviours. As of Monday, Winnipeg is designating four stretches of road as “designated bicycle/active transportation routes.” These nods to basic human needs should not be seen as reckless, but as acts of simple compassion.
A lot of this comes down to just how long this is going to last, and as of yet that’s unknowable. But if municipal governments in particular are planning for months upon months of these kinds of restrictions, then they need to start thinking about release valves.
Surely there is more than enough room even in Canada’s largest cities to allow people out of the house for a bike ride or a jog or a lakeside walk, with proper social distancing in place, without significantly ramping up the risk of exposure to COVID-19.
If there isn’t, as weeks stretch into months, the risk of the cure being worse than the disease comes into view. All the more reason for our governments to level with us as to the assumptions they’re working from. We cannot all be “in this together” so long as governments are keeping their constituents in the dark.