Trapped at sea, fighting at home: COVID-19's toll on northern Ontario 5 years later

CBC

17-03-2025

Trudy Clement and her husband were among the first Canadians caught in the COVID-19 pandemic when their cruise ship became an unexpected quarantine zone in Japan.
It was early February, 2020, and the couple from Callander, Ont., boarded their vessel with only a vague awareness of an emerging virus.
Soon, the pair alongside approximately 3,700 other passengers, would be confined to their cabin for two weeks.
"We just looked at each other, my husband and I, and it was like, 'You're kidding. You're really kidding me right now,'" Clement said in a 2020 interview.
The ordeal stretched to nearly a month before the couple finally returned home to northern Ontario.
"2020 was a horrible year," Clement told CBC's Morning North on Monday.
Just days after returning from the cruise ship quarantine, Clement's brother died, marking the beginning of a difficult year.
A few months later, her husband Steve passed away from cancer and restrictions prevented typical funeral proceedings.
"A lot of people couldn't pay their respects, other than online or by card," she said.
Follow Trudy as she disembarks from the Diamond Princess
5 years ago
Duration 1:30
Five years later, Clement said she feels like the pandemic taught her to cherish time with family and friends.
"If it's going to teach you anything, it's going to teach you to grow closer together, not grow apart. You don't want to be fighting with anybody during a stressful time like that," she said.
Crisis in Kashechewan
In the summer of 2021, more than a year after Clement's quarantine, one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in northeastern Ontario hit the fly-in Cree community of Kashechewan. More than 200 people in the James Bay First Nation of 1,800 were infected.
Several were airlifted to hospitals in southern Ontario – including the elderly parents of Celina Wynne, a frontline mental health worker.
"Mental health was rising, and a lot of anxiety, a lot of everything, because people were scared," she said.
Wynne explained that mental health services had to adapt to COVID-19 restrictions. Counselors began making house visits and sessions took place outside or through a window.
While she was caring for members in the community, her father was fighting for his life in an intensive care unit almost 1,000 kilometres away in Kingston, Ont.
"He said it was like somebody sitting on his chest because he couldn't breathe," Wynne said.
Her mother, who also tested positive, was transported to the same hospital in stable condition.
"My mom was emotional, because she knew my dad was sick, really sick. She thought she wouldn't see him again," Wynne recalled.
Her father eventually returned home and came off the airplane using a walker.
"When he came home, it was sad to see because the strongest man I knew couldn't really walk," she said.
Wynne said her father was encouraged to return to his hobby of making bird decoys out of tamarack, a traditional medicine often used for breathing problems.
"And probably within a week, he was up and walking. He was feeling better. I believe in our medicines and that our traditional medicine helped a lot of people during COVID."
While stories like Clement's and Wynne's unfolded in different ways across the country, healthcare workers and researchers faced a time of uncertainty, urgent decision-making and lessons still being processed.
Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and former scientific director of Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table, remembers the fear and chaos of the early months.
Razak had been working at a hospital where a healthcare worker had previously died from SARS, which he said contributed to the overall sense of unease.
"There was a lot of institutional memory and fear of what could happen when something highly infectious and potentially lethal suddenly emerges," he said.
At the start of the COVID pandemic, many healthcare workers isolated themselves in apartments or hotels to avoid exposing their households.
"They were worried about taking the virus home and exposing young children or older parents," Razak said.
He also recalls patients who died alone due to hospital restrictions.
Calls for formal review of COVID-19 response
The science advisory table, composed of volunteers, was initially expected to only last six months, but as the pandemic intensified, they began meeting 10 to 20 hours a week to analyze rapidly emerging research and provide recommendations.
"You would prepare what you thought was the best possible recommendation based on science, and a new paper could literally come out that afternoon or the following morning, that would change the way you would think," Razak said.
Now, five years later, he believes Canada still hasn't fully processed what happened. Unlike after the 2003 SARS outbreak, which led to a formal review, there has been no equivalent report on COVID-19.
"At a national level and at a provincial level, we have not done a systematic review of the pandemic to learn those lessons the way that we did after SARS one," Razak said.
While Canada has seen improvements in pandemic preparedness – particularly with advancements in vaccine development – Razak remains concerned about lingering weaknesses in the system.
The pandemic left behind widespread staffing shortages, with many frontline workers retiring or leaving the field due to burnout. Without meaningful efforts to rebuild and support the health workforce, Razak fears the system will be even more vulnerable when the next pandemic arrives.
"Almost every scientist that I speak to suspects that the pressures that created this pandemic, which is the very close interface between humans and animals, will create another pandemic situation for the world," he said.
"So it's a question of when that will occur. And I would say the data suggests that even now, there are worrying candidates."