Angst and tragedy accompany signs of hope

Instead of celebrating the Victoria Day long weekend, we mourned the death of a young Snowbird member who died in an event entitled Operation Inspiration designed to lift our spirits during this pandemic.

That about sums up 2020, doesn’t it?

Even when we try briefly to get away from it all, up pops another tragedy to prey on our anxieties.

And given that Tuesday only marked Phase 2 of the Re- Open Saskatchewan Plan, it very much seems as if it’s going to be a while yet before we return to some semblance of normalcy. As we plod forward, we keep hitting road blocks — both real and psychological — that keep us from making progress in this bizarre journey.

Again, we have to stop and mourn during this pandemic and we can’t even do that in the normal way.

COVID-19 will likely mean that friends and families of Halifax’s Capt. Jennifer Casey who died in the Snowbird crash in Kamloops on Sunday probably won’t be able to get together for a traditional funeral as Nova Scotia is still prohibiting large gatherings. Your heart goes out to not only her friends and family, but the entire province that seems to have endured more than its fair share during this pandemic.

As hard as this tragedy is in B.C. where the crash happened or here where Moose Jaw is home of the Snowbirds, it does seem fate has been especially cruel to Nova Scotia of late. The mass shooting that killed 22 including RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson affected the entire country. So did the helicopter crash off the coast of Greece that killed Sub-lt. Abbigail Cowbrough, a 23-year-old sailor also from Halifax.

That we are seeing so many young women in uniform die in tragedies seems to only add to the despondency at a time when nerves already seem so frayed and the psychological effects are difficult for many.

“What we know about stress related to COVID -19 is that it revolves around a lot of the unknowns — and there remain many unknowns, many questions,” Gordon Asmundson a University of Regina clinical psychologist and professor told the Leader-post’s Heather Polischuk.

“It’s not like it’s a threat that we can see.”

Asmundson is joining colleagues in British Columbia, New York and Texas in a research project examining how COVID -19 has affected various demographic groups.

No doubt, COVID-19 has added to the anxiousness that spring brings in Saskatchewan as we all rush about to prepare for an all-too-short summer and farmers rush into the unknown of another growing season.

Yes, farmers are being as hard hit as anyone and may now find themselves embroiled in a five-monthold lockout dispute at the Co-op refinery in which we now know that Regina Mayor Michael Fougere’s office received an anonymous threat last February from someone speculating on the use of explosives to end Unifor blockades. Hopefully, the author or authors will find themselves before the courts.

But rather than dwell on tragedy or even unsavoury things that sometimes just happen, maybe now is a good time to recognize things are getting better. The numbers suggest it’s not quite as hopeless as it sometimes seems.

The three-day Victoria Day weekend saw just two new cases and 47 recoveries in Saskatchewan — the greatest strides since all this began.

Spring is also a time of hope and optimism and surely one way to get past angst, anger and tragedy is to find ways of returning to something vaguely resembling normal.

Today, that may mean going out and getting a haircut or buying a pair of new shoes.

Maybe the long and winding path past tragedy and towards normalcy begins with doing a few more normal things.

Mandryk is the political columnist the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.