Park those planes and let’s get this done right
Remember last March break when everyone vacationed and then it spread like wildfire?
The day the travel ban was released all of my social media channels were blowing up with those in favour and those against.
There were politicians writing letters to the prime minister saying that the government is overstepping their bounds or regular citizens applauding this ban saying it should have happened months ago.
I have $1,900 sitting in a West Jet travel bank, for a trip we had to cancel last April. Will the credit expire or the airline go bankrupt? Who knows; but I do know I’m getting really tired of people’s conspiracies.
You can still go online and order anything you want, buy groceries every day if you feel like it or go on your social media to blast everyone and everything about how unfair the government is without getting handcuffed, so I find it so tiring to hear all of those who are saying that Canada is headed down the path of a dictatorship. Remember when we didn’t have seatbelts or car seats? They were mandated to protect us based on numbers of fatal accidents and no one got riled up about strapping one on.
Call me crazy, but I think it is pretty safe to say that most people living on Earth have never lived through a global pandemic because if you have, you are now 102 and the very people we are trying to protect.
The last global pandemic was the Spanish flu, which lasted from February 1918 to April 1920 and infected about a third of the world’s population, in four successive waves. We’re only in wave two.
Do I miss the beach and ocean waves? Absolutely. I miss the sunsets, while being barefoot and smelling of coconut sunscreen.
I miss it all, but you know what I would miss more? My dad. He’s my reason I follow the rules and distance and mask. He’s over 70, he was a smoker forever and he’s living in the GTA.
We as Canadians have so many freedoms. The fact that I can sit and type this article and you can read it are just one of them.
I love a good movie, a great book and a plot twist, but it doesn’t mean we’re living in one. People are taking to social media channels to plead for justice and ask the government to rethink this travel ban, but is a short hotel stay the demise of a country?
If the government was footing the hotel bill while you waited for your test results possibly saving a life or two, no one would protest.
My nephew is attending boarding school in Malaysia with his family living in Singapore. Just before Christmas he had to leave school, but Singapore was locked down so he couldn’t return home.
After much panic over where he’d go during a global pandemic it was decided, that as a Canadian citizen, he would fly here to stay with my in-laws who are both in their 70s and high risk.
I don’t think any of us would have minded footing the bill to have him in a hotel while he awaited his results, alleviating two weeks of fear that he had brought it home to my in-laws.
Instead, he stepped off the plane, had his temperature taken and was on his way. Remember last March break when everyone vacationed and then it spread like wildfire? I don’t want to go down that road again.
People have had babies and aren’t allowed to have family around and yet we can sip cocktails on a beach without a care in the world? If we are going do this, let’s do it right and get it over with. All in and then history.
I receive sympathy emails from all of my friends in Australia who are now back to life as normal. They did it right, locked the whole country down and curbed the spread.
For many reasons, we need to keep our kids back in school, so shut it all down so we can make that possible.
I am happy to be safe on Canadian soil and happier knowing that these tropical countries I like to visit don’t have to worry about us bringing it to them as they do not have the means we do to treat it.
When I return to a sunny island, I will kneel down and kiss the sand and then wash my sandy lips in the salty ocean waves.
The best things in life are worth waiting for and if it means my dad will still be here to come along with me, then park those planes and give it time. When those skies can open safely, travel will come back and our loved ones will be around to see the world with us.