Let’s be careful out there
Barber shops, hair salons, malls and patios reopen in Toronto, but health experts warn those venturing out to be vigilant and protect themselves — and each other
Toronto is springing back to life — but slowly. Throughout the city Wednesday morning, restaurants, nail salons and barbershops unlocked their doors to the public for the first time since Ontario shut down in mid-March.
It’s a milestone that’s invited a mix of anticipation and anxiety.
The city was quiet as the day started. By noon, streets and sidewalks had become patio spaces. Reopening protocols mean bars and restaurants can only operate at 50 per cent capacity for outdoor seating.
Experts cautioned Torontonians venturing out Wednesday to protect themselves.
“I’m not against opening, but I think there’s so much we could do to do it in a safe, sustainable way and if we don’t do it now we’re going to pay a heavy price later,” said infection control epidemiologist Colin Furness.
“We need to have people wearing masks in malls and stores, and we’re going to pay a horrendous price if we don’t.”
At Organic Nail Bar in the King West neighbourhood, customers were required to book an appointment for a manicure or pedicure; Plexiglas separated the nail technician and the customer.
Owner Mike Duong said the salon was fully booked for the day.
Simi Kapur, co-owner of Futures Bistro at Bloor St. and Brunswick Ave., said a lot of work went into reopening on Wednesday, like figuring out how to maximize the space while being in compliance with Toronto Public Health guidelines. Kapur said she worked hard to ensure employees were on board and comfortable with new training and protocols, as well as to organize PPE, gloves and hand sanitizer.
“Very quickly we had to react to, ‘Can we even be open today or should we wait until Friday?’” she said.
Abreezy, overcast day contributed to a relatively slow morning on the Futures patio, but faces — some familiar — eventually began to trickle in. Many tables were occupied by mid afternoon.
“People are coming out,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of our regulars. Very supportive, thankful to come in and stop by for a pint. That really helps us in summer, to move our draft.”
Opening was a welcome relief after three months of anxiety and tension, but there were still lessons to be learned — like asking people for their contact tracing information upfront.
“It’s also education for the customer,” Kapur said. “We may know what the guidelines are, they don’t. I’ve had some customers question the civil liberties part of it … We’re understanding that. Everything is with patience and an air of optimism and education.”
For the restaurants that aren’t yet open, Kapur recommends taking time to set up.
“It’s not going to always be perfect and you will continue to learn as you go, as you adjust,” she said. “It is a learning curve as you get customers in. Put a smile where you can. I know it’s not seen behind the mask, but be thankful that we’re out here, we have the opportunity. We do know a lot of restaurants do not have outdoor space.”
Toronto is one of the last cities to join to Stage 2 of the province’s reopening plan, which started several weeks ago in some regions.
Some patrons were so excited at the prospect of venturing out that they lined up to gain entry at midnight. About 150 people had to be turned away from the patio at Marbl Restaurant on King Street West by Spadina Avenue.
Retail outlets had a slower start Wednesday.
At the Eaton Centre, Banana Republic, Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma opened their doors, while other stores at the mall remained shuttered on the first day of Stage 2. Shops like Lululemon, Zara and Ted Baker put signs on their doors notifying customers that they intended to reopen late in the week.
Physician epidemiologist Dr. Nitin Mohan said masks were especially recommended for indoor spaces.
“In dense places like Toronto and Peel, I think if you are entering a closed space where you are not able to maintain physical distancing like a mall, I highly suggest wearing a mask, and for individual stores as well I suggest they provide masks for customers,” said Mohan, a partner at ETIO Public Health Consultants.
Masks are not mandatory in any of the major Toronto and Peel region malls — including Eaton Centre, Yorkdale, Dufferin Mall and Square One. All say they encourage shoppers to wear one inside the mall, adding that some retailers within the malls do require them.
In Scarborough, malls were quiet; Scarborough Town Centre, near Brimley Road and Hwy. 401, was near empty shortly after opening at 11 a.m.
Retailers such as Sephora were limiting the number of customers and employees who could be in the store at any one time to 34. A security guard said that mall washrooms could only be used by people wearing masks.
The Malvern Town Centre, near Nielson Road and Sheppard Avenue East, was also very quiet.
Dipak Sheth, owner of the mall’s Gateway Newstand store, said he was glad to reopen and doesn’t know how he survived the past three months. If the lockdown had continued, Sheth said he would have been forced to declare bankruptcy.
Business was also slow in the Agincourt Mall, where Ken Chiu has owned Multi, a luggage store, for 20 years.
Chiu said customers usually flowed through the Sheppard Avenue East mall from Walmart, which anchors the mall at one end. But access has been closed because of the pandemic.
At the other end of the mall customers were lined up, waiting to get hair cuts at KY Hair Salon, owned by Ken Ye for five years.
Around the corner, the Shiny Salon and Spa was buzzing with customers getting hair cuts and manicures.
By the afternoon, the Parkway Mall at Ellesmere Road and Victoria Park Avenue was busy in comparison.
Julia Jiao, who opened her nail salon on Wednesday for the first time in three months, said that many of her customers had been so anxious to return to her salon that they started calling her every day, to ask when she would reopen, about a month into the pandemic.
But she said that the number of shoppers in the mall on
Wednesday was still down from levels before the pandemic, even though many of the other businesses in the mall, including Canadian Tire and Dollarama, never closed.
Malls that have already been open for weeks in other parts of the province and country have found that there is pent-up demand from shoppers, said Karl Littler, senior vice-president of public affairs at the Retail Council of Canada.
“There’s an initial enthusiasm, and then we found it flattened out a bit thereafter and is not at levels that it was traditionally at, but certainly there’s a significant return of customers in albeit very different circumstances,” he said.
Some small businesses saw their patience in the reopening process rewarded Wednesday, as former clients flocked back to execute plans the pandemic put on hold.
At Puedmag Inkpire Tattoo Studio on Bloor Street, co-owner Tina Legris said the studio was balancing fitting in anyone who missed their bookings over the last three months with a calendar that is already full.
Legris said she was “just trying to take it one day at a time and make sure that we can co-ordinate and get the clients who had their appointments in first.”
“For us as a tattoo shop we’re already always used PPE so the only big changes for us were the mandatory masks, social distancing where possible and we are screening” she said.
A waiting area sat empty, as clients can no longer wait for their tattoos or piercings in the shop.
It’s among a number of changes the studio has implemented, along with doing away with their 48-hour cancellation policy and having staff screen themselves before showing up for work.
The studio is open seven days a week and Legris is happy to be there as much as possible. She doesn’t know anyone who didn’t want to work over the past three months.
“Especially as artists, it’s a whole different world for us. Artists are mostly self-contracted so it’s not like we could just get employment insurance. (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) was a huge help for a lot of our artists,” she said.
“Thank god for that.”
“We need to have people wearing masks in malls and stores, and we’re going to pay a horrendous price if we don’t.”
COLIN FURNESS INFECTION CONTROL EPIDEMIOLOGIST