Wonder if everyone in Portapique took it ?
And one more thing Nova Scotia’s premier and Chief Medical Officer pleaded of Nova Scotians, above all Nova Scotians living in more urban centres like Halifax and Dartmouth.
They said ‘please don’t go to your rural summer homes, don’t spread COVID-19 from its current hotspot in metro Halifax to its current coldspot : Northern Nova Scotia’.
I wonder how many of the summer residents of Portapique took that advice as well ?
Because what happened last weekend isn’t just a mass murder story : its possibly also a Covid 19 story.
If I can draw a parallel to another existential crisis, WWII’s Blitz, there we saw working class East Enders getting the bombing in the neck while well-to-do West Enders took themselves off to stately Country Homes near quiet rural resort towns.
Funk Holers they were called and they weren’t (and aren’t) popular.
On one hand, you can hardly blame metro HRM’s Funk Holers : they see 757 positive Covid in Central Zone HRM versus only 39 positive Covid in the Northern Zone. They don’t want to die of Covid and they have the money to do something about it —- and given their social status don’t really expect rural RCMP charging them for breaking curfew.
But on the other hand, it has mostly been working class residents of metro Halifax who have had to continue to go to work each day, its is mostly working class residents who have tested positive for Covid.
In the deep background, away from the public eye ,well to do metro residents have been beating their gums to Conservative politicians begging them to get the restrictions on summer cottage visiting lifted.
Some Conservatives, spineless, have gone along with the gag. (One is a neighbour, I’m Nova Scotian , I’m nice, so I won’t mention his name.)
Other Conservatives (big shout out here to Steve Streatch !) have said ‘no way : we have many elderly residents living here in rural Nova Scotia and our hospital facilities aren’t equipped to handle seriously ICU patients, I join with the Liberal premier for once : stay the blazes home, well-heeled urbanites!”
Killings, Covid & Class Conflict : this will be a complex and complicated case for journalists and historians to dissect...
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