‘A lot of sadness’: Tragedies test N.S. premier
Province has suffered series of crises in midst of COVID-19 pandemic
One of the finest writers to ever come out of Nova Scotia once wrote that Canada had “no proper spring,” and that it was “always skipped when winter leaped right into summer.”
This year, contrary to Hugh MacLennan’s musings, Canada
has had a spring — a long, cruel, gruelling one. And nowhere has it felt longer and crueller than in Nova Scotia.
Since April 18, the province has seen the country’s worstever mass shooting, the loss of three Nova Scotians in the Cyclone helicopter crash off the coast of Greece, the disappearance of a three-year-old boy in Truro and, now, the death of Capt. Jenn Casey, a Haligonian, in Sunday’s Snowbirds crash. All the while, COVID-19 continues to infect Nova Scotians and hammer the economy.
How has Stephen McNeil, Nova Scotia’s premier, kept it together and led his province through such a terrible, tragic time?
The short answer: It depends. On the weekends, he might escape to his home in Annapolis County (about a two-hour drive from Halifax), go for a walk, or unwind with his family.
But his routine there remains rooted in work.
Over the weekend, he was working the phones from his living room and helping to finetune plans to further “open up” Nova Scotia, which reported three new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, for a grand total of 1,043.
McNeil, the 12th of 17 kids, realizes how stressful his job can be, but appears to have kept a level head so far.
When asked if he’d be able to stay as sane if the lockdown happened when he was a kid — and he’d been forced to selfisolate along with his 16 siblings — he laughs.
“I don’t think I would have gone nuts, but I think my mother might have,” McNeil said during an exclusive interview on Saturday. “We had our own built-in sports teams here and we had a pretty big backyard, but it would have been pretty entertaining, for sure.”
Of late, McNeil has tried to mix in some exercise before work to keep healthy.
“There’s been a lot of sadness in Nova Scotia over the last little while, not just due to COVID … and I really had to start finding some time, usually in the morning, to try to go for a walk near where I live, down in the city,” McNeil said.
After his morning walk, the premier will head into work. With help from his “skeleton crew” in the premier’s office, who have managed to collectively isolate themselves over the past couple of months, he’ll go over briefings and prepare for the daily COVID-19 statistics.
From there, it’s usually on to a press conference with Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief public health officer, who — quite surprisingly — McNeil says he first met on March 13, just days before the day of the province’s first COVID-19 case.
“I knew him from a distance,” McNeil says. “Obviously, he’s been in public health for a while, but I don’t know if we’d ever met before.” The two men, both somewhat stern, sympathetic low-talkers, come across as an odd couple of sorts, and have become the faces of the province’s fight against COVID-19.
Despite their recent introduction, McNeil says the two have become fast friends.
“I will tell you this,” McNeil says, “no matter what you’re doing, if the people around you are good people, you can figure it all out, and Dr. Strang is a really good guy. I really appreciate his willingness to have conversations about everything, and he really cares about people.”
McNeil says that, in addition to Strang, he’s relied heavily on his staff the past month, “who have been carrying the bulk of what I’ve been doing.”
His cabinet has also been crucial in helping to steer the ship, he says, particularly Randy Delorey, the provincial health minister (who has drawn criticism for being tight-lipped on COVID-19), as well the deputy premier and finance minister, Karen Casey.
More work is usually on tap after the press conferences, but on Thursdays, McNeil does a “weekly call with premiers, and then a followup that evening with the prime minister.”
He says the Atlantic Canadian premiers talk outside of those meetings, “to look at what’s happening in the region.
“Each of us know what the other person is living through, so, it becomes a chance for us to talk about what public health is doing and how we can protect our provinces,” McNeil says.
Yet, after enduring the past month, a period of almost unprecedented loss, McNeil worries Nova Scotians may soon have to deal with another crisis: a second wave of COVID-19.
“People have been particularly supportive, cautious and respectable, and they’re understanding the severity of this virus,” he says. “But I do worry, even with all of that, that there could be a second wave, and that’s why it’s important to flatten this curve as low as we possibly can in our province.
“If we’re a little slower opening than others to ensure that we flatten the curve, I think in the long run, it’ll be better economically for us, because it will hold us in good stead if there is second wave,” McNeil says.
The premier’s approach over the past little while has been mostly praised. His early, oldtimey appeal to “stay the blazes home” resonated with Nova Scotians of all stripes, spurring spinoffs like a “Stay the Blazes Home Blonde Ale” from Garrison Brewing. (“Like Premier McNeil, this blonde ale is refreshingly unfiltered!” reads the back of the can.)
But McNeil hasn’t escaped criticism. His decision to wait for a federal inquiry into the mass shootings of April 18 and 19 and his handling of a COVID-19 outbreak at a longterm-care home in Halifax have not gone unnoticed.
The story of that long-termcare home, Northwood, is especially tragic.
Nearly one-third of COVID-19 cases in Nova Scotia have come from inside Northwood, be it residents or employees. And of the province’s 55 deaths, 49 are from Northwood. It is by far the worst outbreak in Atlantic Canada and, despite mass testing, new cases continue to trickle in. Knowing what he knows now, what advice would the premier give to a successor in a similar situation?
“I would say believe in public health, It’s important that you follow the science and be prepared to change. One of things we’ve seen here is that the best public health advice … has changed a bit, as we learn more about this virus. So believe in the science, and prepare to be flexible.”