Last month, I watched a tv series on a streaming service. Somehow, when the episodes are available in this format, it is so much easier to become deeply engaged in the story line. In one season of the series, the topic covered the pandemic. As I watched these episodes, I found myself reliving the confusion, anxiety, fear and uncertainty that we all experienced during that period. I found that watching those episodes threw me back into the stresses of pandemic times, and I realized that I had many issues around the pandemic that I have not fully processed.
When the pandemic was announced in Winnipeg on March 13, 2020, we were all shocked and concerned about the impact on our communities, our businesses, and our families. With the pandemic announcement came the prohibition on gatherings of more than 500 people. At the time, I was the executive director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and that weekend we had three concerts scheduled for which we had almost 2,000 tickets sold for each concert. After some conversations and shock, we realized that we would have to cancel all three concerts, and what would we do with the remaining 30 performances in the season?
The worry for the more than 100 employees of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the future of the organization was significant. If you can’t gather people together, how can the musicians perform, and how can audiences be in an enclosed space to enjoy the concerts? How long would the pandemic last? How grave was the situation in Manitoba? How could the organization survive this crisis?
In our personal lives, the onset of cold or flu symptoms in ourselves or family members was cause for great concert. The logistics of daily life were completely derailed by pandemic protocols. At a certain point people were encouraged to wash everything that entered the home. We were cut off from visits to our senior family members if they lived in group housing and travelling by bus or singing in a choir were radically dangerous activities. Hospitals were overwhelmed and recommendations for care was contradictory and confusing. Reports of deaths and serious conditions in some parts of the world were daily occurrences. Stores started to run out of different kinds of products, and this seemed to bring out the worst in some people who felt compelled to travel around to different stores to purchase as much as possible and then store it at their houses. The frenzy around access to toilet paper remains one of the most ridiculous and dismaying memories of that era.
The businesses and offices in the downtown were almost empty. Restaurants were closed, the downtown area became a ghost town, and we all spent much time isolated in our homes. No one knew how long this would go on, and truly this carried on for a very long time. From March 13, 2020, till the summer of 2022, we were all caught in various states of suspended animation. When family members died or were married, a maximum of six people could be in attendance for quite a period. A complicated system of health care services evolved. Once a vaccine was approved a whole other set of problems and divisions arose as many people vied for early access to the vaccines and other refused to accept vaccination. Misinformation and misunderstandings between family members and colleagues were rampant, and dysfunction on so many levels hit our communities.
I have still not seen a comprehensive evaluation of best practices and approaches taken in various cities and nations to address the public health, economic, and social issues of life during a pandemic. I suspect that the distrust of our institutions and divisions and societal strife remain horrible souvenirs of our journey through the pandemic.
Bit by bit our societies started to slowly return to more normal operations, but it took a long time, and certain parts of our communities still carry significant damage from the pandemic era. The downtowns of almost every city are still suffering from business closures, and many offices have not yet returned their full work forces to their offices. Businesses have failed, marriages have been strained. Children who were not able to attend school for long periods of time continue to suffer gaps in their education and skill training.
We all lost much ground during the pandemic, and we have likely not fully realized the personal and community damages and trauma we all experienced. During the pandemic I took much hope in the ways that people found to reach out to each other, to maintain friendships, to continue to perform for audiences, to keep businesses, and to try to keep our institutions intact.
I was particularly moved by the symbol of the ghost light that was kept burning in theatres around the world during the pandemic. Many of the theatres shared with all of us their tradition of putting a single light on a stand on the theatre stage when the theatres were closed during the pandemic. The ghost light is placed on a stage when a theatre is not is service as reminder that the actors, backstage personnel, and audience members will return, and the stage manager will one day be able to say “places” and the life in our theatres will return. One lovely description of this that I can recommend was created by the theatres in the Detroit area and filmed by PBS. You can find it if you search for Detroit PBS Ghost Light Project. The video gives me hope and it always brings me tears, but in a good way.
I know that this summer, I am going to do my best to build experiences and times for reflection that can help me to address some of the remaining worries and trauma from the pandemic era. Time with family and friends, spending time in nature, and listening to good music are my therapies of choice.
Trudy Schroeder provides project planning and management services to the community through Arts and Heritage Solutions.
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Editor’s Note: Despite the trauma, folks like Trudy Schroeder made the best of it, holding virtual dinners, putting on streaming concerts with one or two musicians playing outdoors. It was all rather beautiful in a way. But not so much that anyone would have wanted to do it all again – ever!