Writers craft a pandemic `keepsake'
Limited-edition book documents capital region's 2020 experiences in prose, poetry
“The last time I spoke to my father, I was crying ...”
So begins Suzanne Keep two's devastating essay that opens COVID-19 Chronicles: Reflections on the 2020 pandemic, a slim volume that aims to capture the pandemic experience of Ottawa and Eastern Ontario residents in prose and poetry. The 103-page book is published by Ottawa Ethnic Media Forum and the Media Club of Ottawa and will be officially launched today at city hall by Mayor Jim Watson.
Guddi Sharma, founder of the Ottawa Ethnic Media Forum, came up with the idea in May, during the early days of the pandemic.
“I was thinking at that time there were so many people cooped up inside,” Sharma said. “I wondered, `What are they thinking? What are they doing? How are they keeping themselves occupied?'”
Sharma floated the idea of a book among her friends and the concept was picked up by the Media Club of Ottawa, which also came on board. Submissions also came from Ottawa Independent Writers and the North Grenville Writers' Circle.
In all, 36 people submitted pieces and none were refused. The book is edited by Robert Barclay.
“I told them this could be a keepsake for your children and grandchildren to let them know what 2020 was like. What was life like in the pandemic? What were people going through?” Sharma said.
Keep two's harrowing essay, The Last Time, describes caring for her father under lockdown in his longterm care home.
“We visited him at his window, holding homemade banners of salutation, waving and blowing kisses,” she writes. “He looked confused and somewhat afraid, unlike he ever did before the pandemic struck.”
Keith Newton's Viral Verses riff on loneliness, isolation, political incompetence — “Hey hey Donald J, how many people are infected today?” — and offer praise for those on the front lines: “How shall I love thee? Let me count the ways, Brave healthcare worker in the darkest of days ...”
Journalist Amira Elghawaby writes how the pandemic has laid bare the inequalities in society, from the Black Lives Matter movement to “those on the periphery: the homeless, the marginalized and the less socially mobile, those doing work we took for granted and may have looked down upon.”
The book has a limited print run of 100 copies for contributors and a copy is being given to the City of Ottawa Archives, which is amassing its own trove of COVID-19 artifacts. It's not for sale in stores or online, but if there is a demand, a second printing will be considered, Sharma said.
In his foreword, the mayor says the book “will serve as a historical record of the experiences of a wide host of eyewitnesses to this pandemic and its effect on their daily lives.” The writings offer hope of a “light at the end of the tunnel,” Watson writes.
That optimism is reflected in the contribution of Elie Mikhael Nasrallah, who likens the pandemic to the war he grew up with in Lebanon. “Wars and pandemics are alike in that they maim and kill with seemingly cold indifference,” Nasrallah writes in his essay, The Invasion.
“Decades from now, if anyone wonders what people did during the 2020 pandemic, my answer will be simple: We survived. We used our time wisely. We made solitude matter.”