Mayor returns to an ‘eerily quiet’ city
Tory worked from home during 14-day isolation, found it quite productive
Toronto Mayor John Tory emerged from two weeks of self-isolation on Thursday into a radically changed city.
“It’s eerily quiet,” he said, after arriving at his office early in the a afternoon.
In the 15 days since he decided, on the advice of health officials, to isolate himself from others after returning from a business trip to London, the number of COVID-19 cases in the city he governs has jumped from 19 to 339 and all but essential businesses and services in the city have been closed.
Popular spots like the Toronto Eaton Centre, which attracts close to 50 million tourists and shoppers a year, are deserted. The city’s main streets, typically choked with traffic at all hours of the day, are hushed.
For two weeks Tory conducted city business via email and video and conference call, speaking to councillors, to mayors in other cities; answering questions from residents via remote media appearances and keeping the Emergency in frequent Operations touch with Centre, set up to co-ordinate the city’s response to the pandemic.
He signed Monday’s state-of-emergency declaration — the first in the city’s history — from his condo while his chief-of-staff Luke Robertson stood close by — but not too close.
Robertson arrived bearing a file with the documents. Tory wore gloves to sign the documents and used Lysol disinfectant wipes to wipe down the documents and the file folder before handing everything back, to protect Robertson and anyone else who might next handle the file.
“Of course I was paranoid, as I wiped it, that the ink of the pen I signed it in would start to run and then it would look terrible a and there were only two copies of it,” said Tory, speaking on the evening of his last full day in isolation.
Overall, Tory said, working in isolation proved productive, although he pointed out that un- like many people who must now work from home, he had the benefit of a spacious condo and staff, friends and family, dropping off binders of work and bags of groceries.
A neighbour dropped off a Starbucks coffee at his door every morning at 7 a.m., until Starbucks closed. Then he switched to Tim Hortons.
Tory said he didn’t have time to be bored, and he had more time to think — in particular about whether he needed to invoke invoke emergency measures for the first time in the city’s histo- ry, a decision announced Monday, after Premier Doug Ford ordered all non-essential workplaces in the province to close for 14 days.
“I could think about it more clearly because I was here by myself — there was nobody wandering in or out; there was just nothing going on,” he said.
He told himself that as soon as his isolation period ended, he would wwa nd walk go straight outside, downstairs but two weeks later, that didn’t seem like a good idea anymore.
Even walking on the sidewalk is fraught for someone as recognizable as the mayor of Toronto, who is often approached in public, something he says he generally welcomes, but would be problematic with social-distancing rules in place that recommend people keep a twometre distance from one another.
Tory, whose schedule is usu- ally aat he packed evenings with and social often events on in weekends, emerged into a world where social interactions aare discouraged, even between family members who don’t live together, and there are few places left to meet even if they could meet.
“While I might have said, ‘gosh, I’d love to go out for dinner,’ there is no dinner to go out for in a restaurant,” said Tory.
His wife Barb arrived at their condo for a visit Wednesday night after his quarantine ended, but will stay with their children while he continues to stay at their condo, to ensure he doesn’t pass the virus on to her if he becomes infected.
The first thing she did, he said, was to tidy the jerry-rigged tele- v vision studio he had set up for himself for his remote media appearances — an iPad perched atop 11 books and family photo albums and a lamp nearby, to illuminate his face. He plans to work mostly from home as much as possible.
“Even going to the office, I think I’ll be limited in the time I can spend there, because we’re asking people to do that, and I want to set an example the best I can,” Tory said.
Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, who is leading the city’s emergency response to the pandemic, praised Tory for remaining in isolation from the moment he returned home from London until the same time 14 days later, and for working throughout.
“He has been absolutely the model of self-isolation.”
“I could think about it more clearly because I was here by myself.”
MAYOR JOHN TORY
ON HIS DECISION TO INVOKE EMERGENCY MEASURES