Personal weekend of global issue reminders By: Dan Lett Posted: 3:47 PM CST Monday, Nov. 7, 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/11/2022 (1261 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was supposed to be a weekend of binging on our favourite things: live music, professional hockey, family. It ended up as a cruel reminder the world is still facing threats on multiple fronts.

First, some background: my partner and I planned a three-day trip to Toronto. The weekend would start with a Friday night concert at Massey Hall (Ray LaMontagne, an alt-folk musician with the pipes of a soulful R&B singer). Then, Saturday brunch with family and in the evening, the Toronto Maple Leafs versus Boston Bruins.

It was all of our most favourite things, packed into slightly more than 48 hours. But it was not to be.

A few days before our scheduled departure, LaMontagne cancelled his Toronto gig and suspended his tour because of “illness in the touring party.” No other specifics were provided, but the language used in the official excuse has become code for “someone just tested positive for COVID-19.”

We are hardly alone among music fans in suffering this kind of delayed gratification.

We are hardly alone among music fans in suffering this kind of delayed gratification.

Billboard magazine, the bible of the global recording industry, tracks concert cancellations due to COVID-19.

This year alone the list includes: Ringo Starr, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, the Doobie Brothers, Avril Lavigne (twice), Eric Clapton (noted anti-vaccine crusader), Haim, Pearl Jam, John Batiste, Brandi Carlile, Willie Nelson, Aerosmith, Fugees, Adele (forced to delay a much-anticipated Las Vegas residency), Rage Against the Machine (Winnipeg date affected), and Billy Joel.

Fortunately, even without the concert, we still had a much-anticipated visit with family and the Leafs-Bruins tilt to enjoy. That’s when climate change decided to flex its muscles.

Waking up at 5 a.m. Friday, we were greeted with a text saying our flight had been cancelled for “unscheduled mechanical issues.” An inquiry with Air Canada a couple of hours later — because that’s how long it takes to get a live person on the phone at Air Canada — revealed our plane was grounded on the tarmac in Toronto. Nobody would confirm why the plane didn’t take off, but you can bet the fog played a role.

With some of the warmest temperatures ever for a November, Toronto was hammered by unprecedented fog. For several days, the fog cancelled dozens of flights in and out of the Ontario capital. It was the main reason why, to our ultimate disdain, we couldn’t get booked on a later flight; there were no later flights.

It was hard to ignore the fact on the same weekend as fog played havoc with flights in and out of Canada’s largest city, global leaders were gathering in Egypt for COP27, which opened with a warning from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres the world is facing “the fight of our lives, and we are losing.”

Taken together, the derailing of my trip to Toronto is not really much of an inconvenience. I am frequently reminded, as I read news from around the world, that being denied a weekend of gratuitous pleasure in a big city is hardly worthy of note.

And yet, the feeling of helplessness sparked by the inability to do something as mundane as boarding an outbound flight was real. So was the dread of being reminded we still face a clear and present threat from COVID-19.

Let’s face it, most of us are trying to push issues such as climate change and the pandemic to the back of our minds, so we can live relatively normal lives. It’s an ultimately foolhardy mindset, but avoiding or ignoring a problem is an indisputable reality of human nature.

Even as a newshound, I’m hardly immune to efforts to avoid thinking about bad things.

Like most, I’m trying to live my life as normally as possible, which is code for “without denying myself anything.” In other words, I’m not at home, with N-95 mask and latex gloves on, closely monitoring the used-cooking oil boiler that heats my radiators and playing board games with my children by candlelight.

The only real comfort I get from my lost weekend is being reminded about COVID-19 and climate change in such a direct way is, ultimately, a good thing. Losing touch with the threats can only make us part of the problem.

In the United States, 40,000 people report new COVID-19 infections, and an average of 320 people die, every day. In Canada, the rates are lower but still alarming: about 3,000 new cases and 80 deaths every day.

At that rate, every 10 months a group of victims roughly equal to the population of Portage la Prairie dies from COVID.

On the climate change side of the equation, 2022 may well become the hottest year on record, and the last seven years are the hottest in the history of recording global temperatures.

I’m trying to ease my sense of loss with the knowledge I continue to live a blessed life. However, if we keep avoiding these threats, my experience may become the future norm rather than the exception.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca