Dr. Bonnie Henry receives a shot full of the Pfizer COVID-19, Dec. 22.
Image Credit: TWITTER/Adrian Dix
March 14, 2025 - 10:33 AM
OPINION
Be Kind. Be Calm. Be Safe.
Those memorable words spoken during the COVID pandemic by BC’s Provincial Heath Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry resonated far beyond by boundaries of the province she so effectively guided through the worst of our times (at least for relatively younger generations).
It seemed that wars ended (though certainly not everywhere), hate and anger dissipated and we all looked out for each other.
As an iNFOnews.ca reporter covering the pandemic from my home in Kelowna, I was encouraged by how the world was actually growing at the same time it was shrinking.
While the world grew smaller by confining us to our homes, it grew globally larger through technologies, like Zoom, that gave reporters in the Interior of BC access to the same provincial, or even national, leaders normally only available to big city journalists.
Throughout the province hearts and signs were posted in windows thanking our health care workers, our truck drivers, our underpaid store clerks for braving the ravages of COVID to keep the rest of us safe.
I had visions of a permanent change coming that would make the world a kinder, calmer and safer place.
How wrong I was.
From praising truck drivers for delivering our food we turned to cursing them for misappropriating out flag, clogging our roads with “freedom” rallies and laying siege to our national capital.
Many people lashed out at our health care workers for imposing masking and vaccine mandates that saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.
Our store clerks were spat on for enforcing mask mandates and went back to being under-paid and under-valued through the skyrocketing inflation that followed the pandemic.
Wars broke out in Ukraine and Gaza, overshadowing the much larger humanitarian crises in places like Congo and Sudan.
Our politics have become much more polarized and rife with mistruths and outright lies. And, now, we have Trump and the economic war he’s launched against the rest of the world that could precipitate death counts as high or higher as COVID as he cuts off aid to those most in need throughout the world.
The one good thing about Trump is that his efforts to annex Canada as the 51st state has allowed us to reclaim our flag and, with an upcoming election, may unite us against a common enemy.
It’s just too bad that it takes global attacks from forces like COVID and Trump to make us care about each other again.
This, too, we will survive. Please, let it be the beginning of a world that truly is kinder, calmer and safer.
— Rob Munro, Kelowna
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