Toronto, Canada

Markus Stadelmann-Elder, 54, Director of Communications

What do you see when you look out of the window?
It's a pleasant sunny day, today - I just watered our balcony plants and I see a new sunflower opening up. And as I look up, I see the valley with green trees, a few high-rise buildings, and the lake. It's a peaceful, calming view.

What did you have for breakfast today?
I just finished eating my muesli with fresh Ontario strawberries, blueberries and bananas. I'm now drinking my second cup of coffee.

What has become your most important object?
I'm not sure whether I have a most important object. I'm glad I have a good camera on my iPhone. I've been taking a lot of pictures since going into "lockdown" and have been sharing them with my family in Switzerland and Germany. It's become an interesting way to diarize my life.

What do you miss the most?
Visiting a cafe, hanging out in a park, quickly go to the shops to pick up an onion that I forgot to buy the day before (and I really need it for dinner tonight). And, most of all, meeting up with family for a celebratory dinner (because there's always a birthday or a graduation to celebrate).

I love looking over the valley from our balcony after the rain.

Yesterday was the first time that we drove down to the lake. After more than three months. It's was a wonderful feeling to walk along the beach, to feel the lake breeze in our face, to watch kids play in the sand, to sit on a bench and eat orange slices for a quick snack. Yes, I missed this place, one of my favourite spots in Toronto - a place to relax and just be.

The beach is one of my favourite places in Toronto. Finally, after three months, we made it down again. On a Monday, it's really quiet.

When we first went into "lockdown," in mid-March, none of us thought that it would take so long to get back to what we now call the "old normal." We thought: "Well, maybe a few weeks, a month tops." And here we are, more than three months later and we are just now lifting some restrictions.
Time has become very fluid. It's hard to remember whether it's Monday, Wednesday, or Sunday. Somehow it feels all very much the same. At least internally. I have a hard time remembering April or May. I know I lived through it, I have the pictures to prove it. And there are documents on my computer that show that I worked a lot. I work at Maytree, a Toronto-based foundation that focuses on solutions to poverty through a human rights approach. But I couldn't tell anyone what I actually did. Or whether it was in that month or another. 
I'm not alone in this. As we meet up for video conferences, my friends speak of similar experiences. We laugh at this - because it is funny how many of us lived our lives according to a calendar that no longer seems to exist. 

Time has become very fluid. It's hard to remember whether it's Monday, Wednesday, or Sunday. Somehow it feels all very much the same.

But we function. We are the lucky ones. We have a comfortable space where we can self-isolate. A place where we can put our computer and work. So many others here in Toronto (and even more so around the world) have lost their work, are in fear of losing it or have already lost their home (because how can you pay for rent or your mortgage if you don't have any income), and don't know what their future will look like.
The numbers of new COVID-19 cases in Toronto are still high. On June 16, we had 82 new reported cases, which brings us to a total of 13,502. Seven people died of COVID-19 - which adds up to 992 since the beginning of the pandemic. In all of Ontario, we’ve had 34,418 reported cases (187 today) and 2,596 deaths (16 today). Those numbers should be much lower now - three months after the first restrictions were announced. We are puzzled and concerned why it hasn't gotten much better. I watch the news and see how life is getting back to a "new normal" in other parts of our country. How people get to enjoy a coffee in Europe. Why not here? 

But we function. We are the lucky ones. We have a comfortable space where we can self-isolate.

At the height of restrictions, only grocery stores and pharmacies were open. Most of us hardly ever left our homes. The streets were eerily empty. You could hardly see any cars and buses drove back and forth without any passengers on them. And when the weather got nicer, the City closed parking lots in parks to prevent people from going there. It was social distancing in the extreme. So we stayed in our neighbourhoods and discovered new paths - they must always have been here, but why would we have walked them until now? The last three months have shown me a whole new world.

A morning view towards our building (the small, narrow one in the middle). Mornings are very quiet - a nice time to walk and reflect on what the day will bring.

I miss my parks. This year we couldn't celebrate the cherry blossom festival in High Park. The city fenced off the whole park - all we could do was watching the blossoms through a webcam. And a park employee walked us through. We could see the beauty. We could hear the birds in the background. But only on screen. It just didn't feel the same.
But COVID-19 is more than just a personal experience. The pandemic has highlighted some of our society's deep inequalities. It has shown how some of our most essential workers are those we treat with the least regard. We rely on grocery store workers to show up for work (no home office for them) - but we pay them minimum wage (which is far below a living wage). Large chains paid them a premium for a while - but that was cancelled just now, because, as one CEO said, "it seems we're going back to normal again."
We rely on overworked staff at long-term care homes to look after our elderly parents and grandparents - but most didn’t get paid a living wage, didn’t receive full-time hours at one facility and had to work at multiple nursing homes to make ends meet (which in turn meant further spread of the virus). Until COVID-19 happened, it seems as if no one particularly cared about their situation.

And as we're dealing with this pandemic, we have to deal with another. One that's been part of us, that we've avoided to address (and deal with): Anti-Black and Indigenous racism. 

COVID-19 also impacted some more than others. Numbers have been much higher in neighbourhoods that are poor and where people are already struggling. Many of them are from racialized communities. For them, the pandemic has made an already dire situation just so much worse. And as we're dealing with this pandemic, we have to deal with another. One that's been part of us, that we've avoided to address (and deal with): Anti-Black and Indigenous racism. 
While the world’s focus is on what’s happening in the cities of the United States, we can’t pretend that things are much better here in Toronto and across Canada. Too often young black men have been carded by police for no other reason than being black and about. Black Canadians talk about problems finding an apartment (when they get to a showing, it mysteriously got rented and is no longer available). And they speak of their negative experiences at work, school and even going shopping for their clothes.

The lockdown gave us an opportunity to explore our neighbourhood again. There are quite a few wonderful hiking paths.

Indigenous youth commit suicide in such high numbers that for any other group the government would surely have put services in place and done all it can do to prevent anyone else from taking their lives. In the last two weeks, two Indigenous people were shot by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) under controversial circumstances yet to be fully investigated and understood. And we learned about many other cases of anti-Indigenous racism across the country. No, we can’t pretend that this is not a problem for us.

You can't keep these two pandemics separate. Addressing one without the other won't work. 

Now that we talk about moving to a "new normal," we will need to address the inequities in our society. More than that, we will also want to address the systemic racism that exists in our society. Because, as many have pointed out, you can't keep these two pandemics separate. Addressing one without the other won't work. 
So - am I hopeful that COVID-19 will bring about positive change to the way we live and how our society functions? Part of me really wishes that this is so. Another part, one that has lived through so many social upheavals in the past, is more doubtful – fatalistically realistic maybe. But if enough people keep on pushing for change, if this moment turns into a non-stoppable movement, then maybe something good can come out of this pandemic.

Today is a pleasant day. Just a soft breeze. 
I'm sitting at my desk looking outside.
It's quiet.
It's hard to believe that we are in the midst of a pandemic.

This year, we couldn't attend the cherry blossom festival in High Park (one of Toronto's largest parks). We're lucky to live right next to the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre; we found some wonderful cherry trees and could admire nature's beauty.

Well, this is just me on one of our hiking paths just minutes from our apartment.

Markus Stadelmann-Elder