Cottagers are as responsible as year-round residents
Re: County video asks cottagers to stay home: Apr. 30
We have immense respect for our medical officer of health, Dr. Rosana Salvaterra, so we feel duly chastened when she and others request cottagers to stay put in their homes during COVID restrictions.
As of now we have been lakeside for six weeks and counting. But closing the borders, no matter where they are, just isn't effective. We are all in this together. And urging cottagers to stay home smacks of suspicion and distrust.
The underlying assumption that we are going to trump local need with demands on food supply and health care smacks of xenophobia, more fear-based than anything factually evident.
Arguably, cottagers are as responsible and community-minded as anyone else. And as far as I know, none of the fulltime residents here are discouraged from provisioning in Peterborough, be it with food, health care or other services. Further, imagine that Peterborough residents were to get all huffy about those bad Toronto people coming in and driving up house prices.
Our cottage is 45 minutes from Peterborough on land my great-uncle bought from the crown 100 years ago, probably before anyone in this district was born.
Cottages, once an affordable retreat pretty much accessible to everyone, are becoming a luxury. They aren't yet surtaxed heavily or outlawed altogether in the interests of thwarting climate change. So we are lucky. We settled here in more affordable times, and we pay our turbocharged waterfront taxes at a rate that contributes to the local economy much more than we cost it.
COVID spacing is mandatory because there is peril in crowding: the GTA with its high density and correspondingly high COVID case-count attest to that. For some it makes sense for people to sequester in less crowded circumstances.
My wife and I understand that it is a fearful time. Forced alienation and isolation confront us in the present, and the future is uncertain. But the wagons are already circled tighty enough without adding yet further barriers and isolation when unity, and understanding should be the ethic that guides us.
Peter Currier, Catchacoma Lake