Skip to main content

EDITORIAL: Shaking Squamish’s ‘perfect’ snow globe – Squamish Chief

Looking at the pages of this paper published one year ago, it makes clear all we are missing out on due to the pandemic.

There are photos of graduation, of course, with youth arm in arm and crowds of families with no thought to their proximity. There are articles about National Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations, and the International Day of Yoga, the Walk to end ALS, and the planned Squamish Arts Council Art Walk.

article continues below

The Squamish Sikh Society was gearing up for the popular Guru Ka Langar celebrations in our streets.

The sports pages were filled with photos from the Sp’akw’us 50 bike race and a provincial track meet.

Canada Day was on the horizon, with its parade and multicultural celebrations at Totem Hall on the agenda. Council and congregations were meeting in public.

Families had already met to celebrate dads in homes and long-term care facilities without a thought of what might be lurking in their droplets.

This all seems like a lifetime away from the Squamish of today and that hurts. This pandemic has changed our society, perhaps just for a blip — maybe all these things will all be back next year and we will click our tongues and shake our heads in shared memory of that crazy 2020.

But with the justified mourning we all need to do for what we are enduring, it also feels like real and lasting change for the better is in the air, arguably thanks to the pandemic too.

Regardless of whom you talk to in town these days, it seems the air is electric with the shifting of perspectives and the opening of minds.

The disgusting truth of it is that George Floyd wasn’t the first person of colour to die the way he did, and as we have seen, he wasn’t the last.

But, given the extra time away from all those things with others we used to enjoy, people in Squamish and around the world seem to be reflecting more, taking action more, changing more. It is a weird thing to say, but it is like collectively, we were too busy, too wrapped up in our next event to truly address the things we knew weren’t working or weren’t just.

The current pressure on our government and other institutions is more than it has been in the past, the outcry louder, the organization, better.

There have been more of the necessary difficult conversations in our homes and online around racism, our real history and changes we could make long-term to slow climate change.

There have been conversations around other things too that may also impact us long-term such as how work is done, for how long and by whom.

We have truly seen for the first time in our lifetimes the importance of front line workers, including grocery store staff and cleaners.

Our snow globe has been shaken and that is hard, but it means that when the shaking stops, we may be a better community for it.

Here’s hoping.



from WordPress https://ift.tt/3dgS9HU
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rufus Wainwright to Perform New Album at Livestream Concert – Rolling Stone

Gearing up for the release of his new album Unfollow the Rules, Rufus Wainwright will perform the record in its entirety at a livestream concert on Saturday. The performance will take place in the ballroom at Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles, previously owned by the silent film star Antonio Moreno. Wainwright will perform on acoustic guitar — similar to his recent In My Room  segment — accompanied by piano, guitar and a string section. The livestream will premiere in Germany and France here , later to be available on demand for 90 days. A stream will be available in the U.S. on All Arts ‘ Facebook page, premiering at 2 pm E.T. “The Paramour Session will show a completely different side of Unfollow the Rules ,” Wainwright said in a statement. “Acoustic, stripped back, sparser, but in a Rufus Wainwrightian sense of course. Good songs can survive in many different environments. I want my fans to have an opportunity to hear the music live when the album comes out. The only w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Future shocks: 17 technology predictions for 2025 – World Economic Forum

We asked our 2020 intake of Technology Pioneers for their views on how technology will change the world in the next five years. From quantum computers and 5G in action to managing cancer chronically, here are their predictions for our near-term future. "lazy", :class=>"", :alt=>""}” use_picture=”true”> Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto 1. AI-optimized manufacturing Paper and pencil tracking, luck, significant global travel and opaque supply chains are part of today’s status quo, resulting in large amounts of wasted energy, materials and time. Accelerated in part by the long-term shutdown of international and regional travel by COVID-19, companies that design and build products will rapidly adopt cloud-based technologies to aggregate, intelligently transform, and contextually present product and process data from manufacturing lines throughout their supply chains. By 2025, this ubiquitous stream of data and the intelligent algorithms ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Work From Home Opens New Remote Insider Threats – Threatpost

The administrator of your personal data will be Threatpost, Inc., 500 Unicorn Park, Woburn, MA 01801. Detailed information on the processing of personal data can be found in the privacy policy . In addition, you will find them in the message confirming the subscription to the newsletter. from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Vbs7zI via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more