Residents have message for seasonal visitors
Year-round cottage dwellers hope their seasonal, city-based neighbours remember one thing as the weather warms: pandemic rules are just as strict in the country as they are in the city.
Fort Qu’appelle Mayor Jerry Whiting said he knows more visitors to his town will mean an increased risk of COVID -19 infection for the people living there.
“But those risks are manageable if people keep in mind that the basic preventative guidelines apply in our community here as well,” he said.
The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency says the province’s public health order does not “prevent people from visiting their cabins to self-isolate,” but it advises people not to make “unnecessary visits to cabins or similar locations at this time,” citing potential for extra pressure on “limited medical care” and lax social distancing attitudes.
Canada’s chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, advised the same in early April.
The Provincial Association of Resort Communities of Saskatchewan (PARCS), the lobby group for Saskatchewan’s cottagers, has been urging its members to take social distancing seriously.
“Continue to follow all the principles of social distancing at the cottage! Although cottage country is usually the place for relaxed rules, that MUST NOT HAPPEN for the foreseeable future. Cottages are often gathering places for multiple households in an extended family; for now, and possibly for some time to come, THAT COULD PUT EVERYONE AT RISK!” reads a March 31 newsletter sent to PARCS members from roughly 41 resort villages, 60 organized hamlets and 30 rural municipalities.
Fort Qu’appelle, a town of about 2,000 full-time residents 80 kilometres northeast of Regina, is a service hub for nearby resort communities, smaller towns and First Nations.
Whiting said it’s important for Fort Qu’appelle to stay open and serve the surrounding area as best it can and as local businesses can allow. But he urged caution for visitors.
“Things can change quickly. We’ve seen them change in La Loche … no one wants to be overconfident in this, but we see of course how things can change in small communities,” he said.
La Loche, a community of about 2,800 people in northwest Saskatchewan, is in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak.
“We’ve got a lot of folks around the Qu’appelle lakes area who are coming out to check on or open up their summer properties,” Whiting said. “They’re an important part of our community as well. But we need to remind them, too, that those measures still apply to gatherings and the like.”
Gary Dixon, a year-round resident of the organized hamlet of North Colesdale Park, about an hour’s drive from Regina, said he thinks people have been coming to their seasonal properties earlier this year than in the past.
“Typically they wouldn’t start coming out until the first, second week of May. But this year, they’ve been coming out a couple of weeks already,” he said.
There are 24 full-time residents in North Colesdale Park; that number swells to 40 when seasonal cabin owners arrive. Dixon said the seasonal cabin owners he’s spoken with so far are aware of rules and regulations around social distancing, and he and his neighbours have connected through “driveway happy hours” where everyone stands two-meters apart.
The District of Katepwa, southeast of Fort Qu’appelle, has roughly 500 year-round residents and can see its population reach 3,500 by July as seasonal residents and summer visitors flock to the community on the shores of Katepwa Lake.
Mayor Don Jewitt said he and district councillors hope that “when people do come, they’ll follow the same provincial and federal guidelines that they’ve become accustomed to.”
That’s particularly important because of the community’s demographics; at age 63, he is one of the youngest guys in the community, Jewitt said.
“We’re not nursing-home bound, by any means. But anybody over 60 has got something going on and they wouldn’t want to have to tolerate one of these viruses.”