5 All Aboard: A Train to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Cameron Yeomans
Imagine getting on a train to go on a trip over March break, and then getting off in two hours and the entire world has been shut down. That is my Covid-19 story.
On Thursday, March 12th, 2020, I was on my way to see my sister in Ottawa, Ontario at university over the March break. With plans of going out for dinner, buying a new MacBook, and going to the movies were all derailed when the world was shut down before my eyes. Being in grade 9 at 14 years old, getting the notification that school had been cancelled the following day and potentially after March break for two weeks, was like Christmas coming early. Little did I know that it would be Grade 12 before school was (almost) back to normal.
Getting a call from my mom panicking that I needed to not touch anything on the train and come back home immediately due to a deadly unknown virus on the loose, I, a teenager on the way to a trip I had been looking forward to for weeks, took that phone call with a grain of salt. However, when my sister called me moments before my train pulled into the station and said that I needed to get off the train quickly, go to the bathroom (without touching anything!), wash my hands, and get to the car ASAP, I started getting more concerned. When I proceeded to get off the train and everyone was in masks and gloves and was setting up additional PPE, I was terrified thinking that there was some sort of Ebola-like outbreak.
The next morning, we still decided to go to the mall to pick-up my new laptop. We found a line of people outside of Apple and were not allowed to enter the store without a store associate, had to wear a mask, and weren’t allowed to touch any of the displays. After, we went to the grocery store to find all cleaning supplies, cases of water, canned goods, and for some reason toilet paper (?) were completely out of stock. Ignoring all the signs from the news and frantic advice from our parents, we decided to make one more stop at the movie theatre before we realized it was closed, the parking lots were completely barren, and at that point we finally decided we should probably go home.
After March break, school was said to be closed for two weeks, however, it ended up being closed for the rest of the semester. For me, grade 9 was then moved online through asynchronous learning, and our grades we had prior to March break could not go down and could only go up. So, if we were passing our classes before March break, we couldn’t fail any of our classes. I think I was probably one of the only people in my entire grade that continued to keep up with my school work, partially out of boredom and partially out of fear of falling behind for future years. However, participation severely declined as we got closer to the summer; even our teachers were giving up out of confusion about the state of the world and our future. This meant for the rest of the semester I was at home all the time with my family, with no reason to wake up before noon and no structure to my day from lack of school, work, and extracurricular activities.
In September 2020, I was going into grade 10, back in-person for school, but however in “octomesters,” – meaning we had one class per semester for about 3 weeks before switching courses. Masks and hand sanitizing were mandatory, in addition to daily symptom screening, sanitizing desks and chairs multiple times a day, and social distancing. There was one more school closure for about 6 weeks over Christmas 2020, and then we were back in person for the remainder of Grade 10. In Grade 11, we were in school again now in “quadmesters” meaning we had two classes per semester with similar rules as in Grade 10. It was Grade 12 before we were back in school without masks and back in regular semesters with four classes a semester.
All my life, I have been dancing competitively so once the world shut down that of course included dance. So, we continued our classes over Zoom in our bedrooms. Imagine trying to do an entire dance class in your bedroom (spoiler: it didn’t go very well). We did this throughout the rest of the season (March 2020-June 2020) and then were back switching between in-person and online classes based on Public Health mandates for the following season. All competitions were cancelled up until the summer of 2021 where we had our first in person competition since 2019. When we were in-person for classes, we had taped squares in the studio that we weren’t allowed to leave, had to sanitize our squares between classes, masks were mandatory, and the lobby was closed. Competitions also looked a lot different and were both in-person and online. There were no award ceremonies, schedules were blocked based on studios so there was no contact with other teams, and masking was mandatory.
My greatest challenge throughout the pandemic was staying connected with extended family and friends, and pure boredom. This had long-term effects on my social skills, increased my introverted tendencies and decreased overall confidence, which I still feel has impacted me 5 years later in university and I don’t think will ever fully change. One way I combated both staying connected and boredom was I got really into reading. I started a social media account just posting book reviews and bookish content, and participated in readathons and book clubs, making many friends online which never would have happened without the pandemic. I also worked closely with independent authors and publishers to review books prior to release promote up and coming books.
Throughout the pandemic, there was a lot of stigma surrounding Covid-19. If you tested positive for the virus, it was said to be because you did something wrong, not that you just got a very contagious virus. It was because you probably weren’t masking or social distancing or staying home. If you were going to the store a lot or if you were travelling outside of your city for some reason then you were to blame for the virus spreading. Especially in the beginning of the pandemic days, people were very secretive about telling people they tested positive or wouldn’t test themselves at all in fear of the stigma surrounding testing positive. This made contact tracing harder and so people who didn’t know they had the virus continued to spread it around. With this in mind, it is easy to assume that the number of Covid-19 cases were much higher than what was formally reported.
During the pandemic, it never really seemed like we were ever going to get off the train of the Covid-19 pandemic. But here, now 5 years since it was deemed a pandemic by public health, we are back to some sort of normalcy; however, I will never forget the days locked up in a house for months on end.
