National Post (National Edition)
After every storm comes a rainbow
2020 Hindsight: We asked several regular contributors to write about 2020. Not to review our annus horribilis — most of us hope to forget it as quickly as possible — but to tell us what particularly struck them about it, whether in policy, politics, arts, culture or life as they and we all lived it. Today: Laura Jones and Matthew Lau.
Just before COVID-19 restrictions changed our lives, I visited Zion National Park in Utah with my mother and sister to celebrate a milestone birthday. It is an awe-inspiring place. I highly recommend it for bucket lists. In between hikes and manicures, I made an unlikely purchase: a red sweatshirt with the word GRATITUDE written across it in pink. I own nothing else remotely like it.
This unlikely sweatshirt captures the things I have come to value most during the pandemic. It's comfortable, and comfort has been key as long workdays have blurred together. It's cheerful, an outlook that has been difficult to maintain but was critical, both as a mother and a leader. Finally, it expresses, in that one word “gratitude,” the dominant emotion I've felt through 2020 (though “exhaustion” was a very close second).
Returning to Canada just days before the border closed and plunging back into work, I was grateful to be home and to have a meaningful job advocating for owners of small businesses.
The uncertainty and stress plaguing Canada's Main Streets are unprecedented in our lifetimes. My association's surveys show over half our members are extremely stressed. More than a quarter are worried about possibly having to permanently close their businesses.
Business owners don't show their stress, however. Just the opposite. When I think back to March, it is notes and signs in the windows of restaurants, retailers, dry cleaners, bakeries, nail salons, hairdressers and opticians in my neighbourhood that I remember. In their windows, business owners continued to try to be cheerful for the many who depend on them. The notes I saw expressed the importance of doing the right thing for the community and encouraged people to stay safe. Just their existence was reassuring. The streets were eerily empty, but the community was still there.
As the pandemic stretched from weeks to months, the notes changed to welcome customers back, thank them for shopping local and provide instructions for how to shop safely. I went back to one of my favourite bakeries to be greeted with these words on the blackboard behind the cash register: “Everything will be OK. Social distance, use common sense, be kind, eat dessert.”
Innovation was critical to keeping communities connected. Everything from appointments with accountants to dance classes went virtual — 152,000 small businesses made the leap to e-commerce. I even tried a virtual facial with product dropped off curbside. These changes were gruelling for anyone who struggles with new technology. One business owner said it took a week of long days and nights to take all the product photos needed for her new website. She hopes customers will come but in small
business there are no guarantees.
Our governments had to innovate, too: shifting more weight to outcomes and focusing less on process, working to do what was most important and getting things done faster while still protecting the public interest. Approving patio expansions for restaurants in 48 hours would have been unthinkable pre-pandemic. Provinces let doctors bill for online appointments. Vaccines were approved in record time. This culture change, if it can stick, bodes well for getting rid of red tape and empowering innovation, which are both critical to Canada's recovery.
For now, holiday decorations are up, and vaccines are starting to roll out. Though the COVID storm isn't finished with us yet, cleanup looms in 2021. Stress for small business remains high as a second wave of restrictions grips most of the country. At CFIB, our helplines continue to serve record numbers of businesses as they struggle to navigate government support programs and agonize over tough decisions about laying off staff who are more like family. Many are fearful for what will happen when government supports disappear. Others are just worried about making it past the holidays. What do you say to the Toronto café owner, only allowed to do takeout, who is making just $50 in sales a day?
I don't think there has been a year we are all so glad to say goodbye to — a year that has changed things so dramatically that anything before mid-March feels like another era. TV episodes that show people hugging and crowds cheering feel as outdated and wrong as last year's economic forecasts.
But 2020 has also delivered some unexpected gifts. One small business sign that made me smile said it very simply: “After every storm comes a rainbow.” My rainbow includes gratitude for things as small as finding the right sweatshirt and as big as the incredible community spirit, captured in thousands of small notes to each other, that is helping so many of us find a way through the storm.