Helping in hard times
In praise of public service, and servants
Once, I recall, it was fashionable to say that all that public servants wanted to do was sit their on their ass all day collecting government perks.
That this statement was often made by someone just sitting their on their own ass was beside the point.
The notion was always untrue. But never has it been more demonstrably false than now.
That is how we feel watching safely from lockdown as the folks suit up to do battle with the COVID-19 Northwood’s Halifax campus, as the nurses and lab techs — left to self-isolate at home — test for the virus at assessment sites across the province, as the paramedics and docs do their bit for those diagnosed with the disease.
They don’t go into it for glamour or money these folks trying to keep the virus out of the places where the most vulnerable live, these men and women who visit those incapable of getting themselves to an ER, these people who keep the hospital rooms sanitized, the patients fed, the system functioning.
We can say the same for the bureaucrats working behind the scenes ensuring doctors get paid for their virtual visits in these social distancing times, who are coming up with ways to get people back to work, and scrambling to keep money in their bank accounts in the meantime.
Ditto the woman behind the mask dropping my groceries in the trunk of the car. The pharmacist who ensures our prescriptions are filled. The deliverymen and women who bring the things that, for whatever reason, we feel that we cannot do without.
They are all doing their part to help us through these difficult times. In their own way every one of them deserves our thanks, and our admiration.
Duty, the way I see it, is a concept that cannot be explained, just understood.
I don’t think that RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson was thinking about her pension when she lost her life during the April 18-19 murderous rampage.
The crew aboard the Cyclone helicopter flying from HMCS Fredericton were members of a mission meant to deter Russian aggression in Europe, when they crashed into the ocean off the coast of Greece.
Mel Boutilier, who died last week at 92, was a fulltime volunteer. But he had spent the last 46 years of his life feeding Halifax’s hungry, and ensuring people had the furniture and skills to lead a better life.
“A giant has fallen,” read the death notice from his family. Which was absolutely true of every one of them.
Beneath our veil of sorrow we understand that smaller sacrifices matter too. Maybe that is why suddenly I don’t hear all of the patronizing references to bureaucrats and red tape anymore.
Not when government employees are looking for patterns in virus infection rates, hunting down possible exposures to COVID-19, and ensuring that the yahoos who think its all a government conspiracy aren’t allowed to gather, ensuring themselves inclusion in next year’s Darwin Awards.
It is as the influential medical journal The Lancet recently wrote: the COVID-19 crisis has forced “the recognition that the basic role of a government is to serve and protect its people” and that “wellbeing has a higher value than gross domestic product.”
In Nova Scotia, beset as we have been by tragedy, this insight is deeper again.
So enough, for the moment, about the swash-buckling entrepreneurs and the management whizzes out there enhancing shareholder value.
Let us hear no more about the taste-makers and influencers who get all the buzz on Twitter and Instagram.
Spare me, for now, the talk about people with power and gravitas in our off-kilter world, who are demonstrating true leadership, who are thinking outside the box.
Let us, instead, sing the praises of the public servant wherever we find them.
You know, the folks in the hospitals, nursing homes, soup kitchens and medical clinics.
The people working in government departments, keeping our world from spinning entirely out of control.
The teachers still educating our children.
The men and women in the fire halls, army bases and RCMP detachments, aboard the naval ships, driving the city buses, behind the wheels in the police squad cars, out there in the storm dealing with the downed power line.
We may not even know they’re there. But they take away our garbage during a global pandemic. They fix the broken water lines. They deliver our contact lenses when the last one busts.
Being part of this group doesn’t require a government cheque. Mel Boutilier didn’t get one.
Neither do the grocery store workers, truck drivers and warehouse clerks who keep the food supply chain intact.
My esteem for them, nevertheless, is deep, even if I know few of them by name. This is my way of saying thanks, for all of us.
John DeMont is a columnist for The ChronicleHerald in Halifax. Reach him at jdemont@herald.ca or @CH_coalblackhrt