Susan MacFarlane If someone asked me in 2015 where I pictured myself in five years, it certainly wouldn’t have included a mask or hand sanitizer. Nope, not even remotely on my radar. Sure, people talked about the possibility of a global pandemic and since the beginning of the century we’ve had SARS, H1N1 and Ebola,… Read more »
City’s brush policy annoying Sir: Many times I have written letters to the editor of The Sarnia Journal but haven’t sent them. Tonight, I am really annoyed. We are getting rid of many very old sickly bushes and trees on our property. So I looked at the 2020 Waste/Recycle/Compost Calendar and found out there is… Read more »
When I was in the travel business in Toronto decades ago, we used to say that the only business riskier than running a travel company was owning a restaurant. In the wake of the global pandemic known as Covid-19, no two industries have been harder hit. For someone like this writer, who spent forty years… Read more »
Shawna Kolkman Lately, everyone has been talking about the degree of seriousness of COVID-19, how inconvenient it is to wear a mask, and the number of deaths in our community. But few are talking about the very real health detriments caused by ‘social distancing,’ a problem that’s increasingly impacting those most frequently affected by this… Read more »
Bob McCarthy As far back as 1910, during the Manchurian plague, a Chinese doctor claimed that microbes were being spread by air and that a simple cotton mask could reduce transmission. Soon after, a prominent French doctor mocked his conclusion and visited the sick without wearing a mask to prove his point. He died of… Read more »
Canada in a COVID-induced coma Sir: Most people contracting the COVID-19 now are asymptomatic. So why are governments in a blue funk over this virus? Why all the dithering because of an irrational fear of a virus we are learning about each day? That’s not to diminish in any way the early impact of COVID… Read more »
When I was a young guy in my teens and early 20s the Hambone Restaurant was my favourite spot to eat – usually late at night, when other places had closed. The famous and, to many, beloved diner was located on the east side of Christina Street, between Lochiel and Davis streets. It was the… Read more »
Class sizes put kids at risk Sir: Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital’s stand on elementary school class size states: “size should be a priority and to include physical distancing.” Toronto School Board said this week to “keep class sizes down.” Dr.Tam’s advice is to “arrange schools so that physical distancing can happen.” Yet Premier Doug Ford… Read more »
A friend of mine sent a really good quote this week: “When we are squeezed, what’s really on the inside comes out. This pandemic has shown the best and worst of humanity.” It was in response to a complaint I’d had about some nasty posts in the comments’ section of recent local media stories. (As… Read more »
It’s an expression that I’ve always associated with the hot, sultry final days of summer. You know – the kind of steamy, humid weather that could make a dog either lazy or likely to go mad. The private high school that I attended sixty years ago thought it important to expose its students, for a… Read more »
