[A special report by one of  JURIST’s Canadian law student staffers at the University of Calgary Law School, reporting as a Canada correspondent, pro tem]

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi addressed my city once again Thursday in regard to City’s Council’s response to our “third wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a year into this crisis, there is nothing unusual about emotional press conferences held by politicians at all levels throughout Canada, as our management of the pandemic has not gone well. However, in this presser Nenshi provided a statistic which sounds like a five-alarm fire bell: the infection rate in Calgary is more than twice the national infection rate in India (520/100,000 and 200/100,000, respectively), where the COVID situation is downright disastrous.

On the basis of this statistic, JURIST has “drafted” me (journalism pun intended) to provide on-the-ground insight from the eye of Canada’s pandemic storm. I feel compelled to open with a bit of levity via wordplay, as pandemic living conditions have progressively whittled my psychological well-being as a law student and MBA candidate, as someone trying to launch a non-profit, and as a Canadian in general terms. The truth is, this is a war. The pun is fitting. It is not merely a war against a virus, or a fight to protect public health and safety. It is one in which Canadians have turned on one another as leadership has weaponised rhetoric. The fight is not intellectual; rather, it is based on abstract visceral feelings that materialise in battles of self vs self, othering, and blame games.

The second wave in Calgary was particularly difficult, as it struck prior to the holidays in December 2020. Like my Albertan peers, I exchanged gifts from 2 metres away on doorsteps and could not even hug friends and loved ones. A friend of mine was rushed to the hospital on December 23, and no one was allowed to see him except for his wife, on brief occasions. Meanwhile, we learned that our politicians were flying to tropical destinations and flouting the rules with reckless abandon.

I just completed final exams for a semester of law courses at the University of Calgary. Before the third wave of the pandemic struck, I was so fed up with being boxed in my home in Calgary that on April 9 I headed out to our property on a ski hill in BC to focus on these exams. The plan was to study my heart out, complete exams, and then stay in BC for an extra week or so after so I could golf and enjoy fresh air and sunshine. At the time that I left Calgary, things were looking more optimistic. I stopped checking in on daily government reporting and instead gauged the state of Calgary’s cases by the amount of new cases my university reports in its daily emails, and for a time these emails had become sparse.

This was temporary.

Over the course of my time in BC, each time I emerged from my law frameworks and books I could see in the news that the situation in Alberta was worsening again. On the morning of my last exam, I awoke to panicked messages from my husband telling me that the BC government announced an imminent border closure and I would need to pack and return home immediately after this last exam. Signs peppered the BC border, reminding Albertans that they are not welcome in the province. Residents of BC’s tourist and border towns have grown outright hostile, and I was glad to be able to return home the day before the border closure in the knick of time.

I planned to be able to go to the gym again and spend time with my equally-exhausted friends to celebrate emerging to the other side of this dystopian nightmare. One of my best friends in law school had been in Yellowknife since last October. I have missed her and we made all kinds of plans for dinners, signing up for various lessons together, and catching up. All of these things are cancelled, and we are once again shot back to square one. It is easy to see how frustrations are bubbling among the populace here in Calgary. My gym filed a creditor proposal this week. Businesses were already suffering in Calgary prior to this crisis (at least two of my friends had closed shops and restaurants in the year prior to the pandemic, and the downtown core presented a sea of “For Lease” signs). Our constant roller coaster of closures and partial re-openings have rendered countless other local restaurants and stores obsolete. Everyone I know has either been sick themselves or knows someone who has. Most of us are mourning at least one COVID-19 death. Some people have grown apathetic and lost faith in leadership, while others are just plain downtrodden and weary.

I am desperate for this roller coaster to end. We all are, at this point. I have learned to live with a constant feeling of worry and exhaustion, and my trust in leadership is irreparably eroded. It feels doubly hopeless, as Canada’s vaccinations have been so mismanaged that the majority of these 520/100,000 cases Calgary is seeing are variants now. I am holding on for the sake of my sanity – and for my life. I cannot help but feeling foolish for carrying a candle of optimism in my heart, but I must protect this light inside me. I will need it some day, when I enter the legal profession to fight other discouraging fights.