Respect those on the pandemic front-lines
It remains one of the strangest sights I've witnessed.
That Sunday, 18 years ago, I left my hotel in Hong Kong's Central District and was met with a scene that, at first glance, could have been confused with stumbling upon a teeming street market in the heart of Manila.
There were thousands of women sitting on the sidewalks as far as the eye could see, chatting, laughing and enjoying makeshift picnics alongside one of the world's busiest thoroughfares.
They were far too relaxed to be protesters and way too joyous to be a nuisance to anyone, even though you had to walk into the road to get past this veritable crush of women.
They were all Filipinas and every one of them appeared to be enjoying this, their single day off from the weekly maid chores they and approximately 200,000 of their fellow countrywomen performed for various Hong Kong families.
The great respect I have for the people of the Philippines was born that day. Maybe it was because the scene rekindled memories of my mother, who'd clean rich folks' homes when I was a toddler; that being the only work available back then.
But it was more than that. Perhaps, it was because they just looked so darn happy, sitting in endless, makeshift circles on the sidewalk, sharing stories and laughing, likely about the strange week just passed. It certainly couldn't have been easy work, but most did it to save enough to send money back to families, hundreds of kilometres away.
In that, they were hardly alone. The Filipino diaspora is one of the greatest in the world and here, in Alberta, we've been fortunate to have so many people from that country doing the jobs many of us would turn our noses up at, as well as the middle class and professional jobs. Many, both immigrants and guest workers, often take on such tasks for that same reason, helping those back in their homeland where remittances are often vital.
Nine months ago, it was members of that same community who were the majority of workers at the Cargill meat packing plant near
High River, which was then embroiled in one of North America's largest COVID-19 outbreaks. That's dreadfully hard work. My first job was in a slaughterhouse 45 years ago and everything subsequent has seemed like working on Easy Street.
Even then, some folk, who engage their mouths before their brains, tried to blame the workers themselves for getting sick because they carpooled and often lived in communal housing. Yeah, well, when you're saving money for your family, you economize any way you can.
So this week, it wasn't surprising to discover the first person to die of COVID-19 contracted whilst working in Alberta's health-care industry was of Filipino heritage.
Joe (Jing) Corral worked on the sharp end of this pandemic as a health-care aide at Bethany Riverview long-term care home in Calgary, where he looked after those nearing the end of life, often suffering from debilitating conditions such as terminal cancers and dementia and prime candidates to become pandemic victims.
Again, it's one of those jobs we prefer done by others, people such as Joe who, like the old folk he tended to, are so often blessedly out of sight and therefore out of mind to the rest of us.
Look, I was going to write this column about those hypocritical provincial politicians who nipped off to warmer climes over Christmas after lecturing the rest of us to stay home and keep apart to thwart the virus. But what more can be said, other than pondering whether Jason Kenney might feel more at home back in Ontario than here in Alberta.
Instead, I'd rather think of others, with big hearts and callused hands, arriving from places such as the Philippines to do the work vital to the lives we lead.
Of course, they all aren't saintly heroes — a word bandied about far too liberally these days — but they do deserve something in short supply this week in Alberta. They deserve our respect.