Bruce Arthur: ‘We just pray for one day that we go without a death.’ Bobcaygeon left reeling by coronavirus

BOBCAYGEON, ONT.-There is a difference between a quiet town and a silent one. Bobcaygeon is neither, and it is both. Some people still wait in line for the Valu-Mart, or Foodland. Some people still drop by the LCBO. The giant farm-town pickup trucks still rumble around, and people still go to the post office. They used to put names of people who had died in the window there, with a nice picture. Recently, they stopped.

Bobcaygeon was already an anchor for this part of cottage country, a retirement destination, a tourist town. It was sainted by the Tragically Hip because Gord Downie couldn't find another place in Canada whose name rhymed with constellation, or near enough. It helped that it is beautiful here. The line, constellations being revealed one star at a time, works.

And Bobcaygeon is the Pinecrest town, right now. As of Friday morning, one in every seven COVID-19 deaths in Ontario had happened in the little one-storey brick nursing home at the top of the hill at the south end of town, on the main road in.

"We're known as Hip town," says Aaron Shaw, 43, the town's citizen of the year in 2017. "And now we're known as the epicentre of Ontario because of this."

Some rooms are shared, separated by curtains. The first public notification of an outbreak came Friday, March 20, and staff got sick after residents did. It was reported there were not enough staff to cover, and that the sick were not separated from the healthy for two weeks, because the building didn't have enough space to move people.

On Wednesday this week Pinecrest announced a 28th resident had died of the coronavirus. On Thursday, they announced a 29th. On Friday, they announced no new deaths for the first time in what felt like forever. The facility has 65 beds. They were full when this started.

"We just pray for one day that we go without a death," said one longtime Bobcaygeon resident, before Friday's announcement. "I mean, we have a death every single day. And everybody's got an opinion and everyone's got a negative suggestion, but those workers are doing the best they can.

"I think there's lots of fear. I'm not a fearful person, I don't have fear of death, but I just wish they didn't have to die alone."

The virus can get anyone, but it hunts the elderly and can ravage care homes, which are understaffed by underpaid workers who often serve multiple facilities. The Globe and Mail counted COVID-19 in over 600 across Canada, and that number is likely higher now. Some have already become infamous, tragedies. Seven Oaks in Scarborough has lost at least 16 people. The Montreal Gazette reported on a private one in Dorval, Ri(C)sidence Herron, which was likened by health professionals who came to rescue it to a concentration camp. Nearly half of Quebec's coronavirus deaths have occurred in care homes.

"We were just first," says Doug Whalen, the president of the Bobcaygeon Curling Club.

What is left is a town in stasis, perched somewhere between tragedy and hope. Bobcaygeon is a place where Toronto money splashes over, a boating paradise along the Trent-Severn Waterway, an off-Muskoka cottage retreat. Approximately half the town's population is 65 and older. The population nearly triples in the summer, but sits at 3,500 through three-quarters of the year; phone numbers are given in four-digit increments, because everybody's number starts with 705-738. A lot of restaurants in Bobcaygeon are just starting to stay open year-round.

The community spirit here is palpable: the horticulture club, the curling club, the Kinette Club, the Legion, more and more. Volunteerism powers a lot of small towns, and this one especially. So they have tried to help each other, where they can. Usually they would gather together. Now, they are trying to find other ways.

"It's devastating," says Shaw, who runs a tree removal company, and who has been a fulcrum of the community response. "It's devastating. I know a very large population at Pinecrest, and when I make my deliveries and I see families standing at the window in tears looking at their families inside, it's hard. It's very, very hard. It's devastating.

"But the community is coming together like crazy."

Normally, Bobcaygeon would be starting to hum right now, as winter recedes. In a lot of small Canadian towns, winters are about finding reasons to be together, or having them forced on you.

"I've been to six or seven funerals since Christmas, because in an older community, people tend to die this time of year, in the winter," says John Bick, 73, whose family was one of the original farming families in the area. "So people are dying from other causes, as well as this."

This is different, though. Bick is likened to a town historian, asked how many he knows who have died in Pinecrest. He says five. No, six. Maybe seven.

Marg Cameron is the president of the Legion. She is 73, and has left the house once in three weeks. Seniors from Pinecrest and Case Manor used to be bused to the Legion once a month, and they would play bingo and games and win prizes, and the Legion would serve beer or juice and snacks. The Legion held a jam session every week with local musicians, and one Pinecrest resident, Elmer DesRoches, would attend. They would play the classics: "You Are My Sunshine" was a favourite.

"His son brought him over every Wednesday, and his dad was always neatly groomed and he loved it, and he'd sing along, and he knew all the songs that they were playing," says Marg. "Elmer has passed away."

She mentions Ruth Sheppard, a woman with a sense of humour and a pillar in the community; Ruth had moved her adult daughter Tami to Pinecrest after Ruth's husband died because Tami - who had Down syndrome - had to be taken care of. Ruth went in after Tami. Both have died.

Marg called all 250 Legion members, one by one, and maybe half were snowbirds just back from abroad. She had the Legion flag lowered to half mast. It was hard to know what to do.

"It's affecting everything," she says. "Even when you drive through it's a bit of a ghost town. We know things will get better down the road, but there's this anxiety, I guess it is.

"You just feel very anxious, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, you don't know who you're going to hear about, you don't know who's going to be the next victim. Even when you go to the grocery store or the pet store. I was going to go to the pet store, and I know Marlene, who runs Pet Valu, and my husband is high, high risk: he's had cancer and a stroke. And she said, 'Margaret, I'm going to bring it to your house.' She dropped it off at my front door.

"People turn it around: they say, What do you need?"

After the outbreak came the panic. Valu-Mart lost 13 of 50 employees, mostly students whose parents worried about them being exposed to the virus. Every order seemed like stockpiling: $400, $500. A lot of seniors were scared of Bobcaygeon's stores, and went to shop at the Sobey's in nearby Fenelon Falls instead. Valu-Mart decided it needed precautions.

"Immediately, we put someone at the front of our store, and we screen," says Jessica Strang, who runs the store with her husband Ken, whose parents owned it before them. "We ask them if they've been out of the country, near anyone who's been out of the country, or if they've been in contact with anyone from Pinecrest.

"And we got backlash, saying, you can't discriminate that way. And my defence there was, if appropriate PPE (personal protective equipment) had been used, half their staff wouldn't have it. And it's unfortunate, and it's not their fault. But I am going to do everything in my power to protect my staff, and my community that's shopping in the store. And that's just how it is. I'm a firefighter. I run into medical calls myself, and we have very strict PPE protocols in place. We have plenty of EMS and firefighters and nurses who shop in our store. I'm not denying anyone. Unfortunately, Pinecrest did not have those protocols in place.

"If someone from Pinecrest comes here, tell me what you want, I will go in and shop it personally for you, and bring it to wherever. Call me."

Shannon Campbell is Valu-Mart's deli manager, and her mother Cathy has been a nurse at Pinecrest for 35 years. On Thursday, March 19, Cathy came down with a sore throat; she stayed home the following day, worried about infecting the residents. Cathy's COVID-19 test came back positive on the Monday. Shannon lost her husband to a heart condition two years ago, and her two daughters stay with her parents every day. She left the store as soon as she heard. Her family self-isolated, and waited.

"She's still sick, but she's still able to breathe, not going to the hospital or anything," says Shannon. Nobody else in the family has tested positive; Shannon's eldest daughter has a rare metabolic disorder, glutaric acidemia type 2, and cannot store fat: her body turns on itself when she gets sick.

"I didn't know how it would affect her," says Shannon. "So that was a whole extra added stress."

Shannon spent 14 days apart from her family. It sounded like her mother had to work to even talk on the phone. Cathy seems to be finally getting better, after three weeks of fever and a cough.

"It's been so hard. The amount of times I've had to call her and give her an update on numbers, and she's been beside herself crying, and feeling terrible that she's not there to help," says Shannon. "And these were people that she's helped take care of for a number of years. They are like family to her. And it's devastating.

"Unless you're actually in there, nobody knows what's happening in there."

Shannon thinks her mom might go back to work when she is well. On Thursday afternoon, a steel-grey hearse sat by Pinecrest's side entrance; later in the day, someone left a big fluffy stuffed toy dog on the lawn outside, and it lay prone on its belly, pointed at the home.

Small communities run on helpers. Shaw's company, Crazy Monkey Tree Service, employs 10 people: he threw three at delivering groceries, to blunt the worries over snowbirds. He didn't charge for delivery: people just pay the bill with a cheque. When people started to tip, he matched it and donated half to the food bank, and half to the Kawartha Lakes COVID-19 relief fund - $1,000, so far.

"We have the big double-barrel masks, and gloves, and hand sanitizer," Shaw says. "We can do this."

"He's been just incredible for the community," says Strang. "He started (the deliveries), and then people started following suit." Her store alone has added 50 deliveries a day, and had to go to 24-hour shifts to fill the orders.

People help. A graphic designer named Paul Reid came up with a T-shirt, and Shaw asked Sherri Peel, who owns the iconic Bigley's store downtown, to help print 1,000: the shirts read, Bobcaygeon, United We Are Strong, Three Islands, One Heart. Peel says they've sold 700, and one family ran inside when they were delivered and came out to pose for a photo. More are being printed, and the goal is $25,000 for the relief fund, which will be aimed at supporting front-line health workers.

Shaw posted on Facebook for iPads; he got 10 of them to Pinecrest so residents could see their families, and another four or five to Case Manor, the other main care home in town. A group scrounged up unused PPE across the region, and Shaw helped deliver it to the Lindsay hospital, the local doctor's office, and Pinecrest. He heard from a cottage couple, Jerry and Mary Lennox of Whitby: they pledged $5,000 for the relief fund, and then another $5,000.

Local farms are delivering fresh vegetables and eggs and meat. Tim Hortons sends food and coffee and tea to Pinecrest twice a day. The local cable company, Cable Cable, upgraded Pinecrest's internet. There have been so many volunteers.

The town did a drive-by of Pinecrest, with emergency vehicles and regular folks, and another couple smaller parades, to show support.

Al Ingram, who was the school board treasurer and another super-volunteer in almost every place, lives just down the road. He thinks a lot about Pinecrest.

"It's amazing to me every time I drive by, there's got to be 12 or 14 cars in the parking lot," says Ingram. "I'm just amazed at the size of the workforce that keeps showing up there."

"Normally when you lose this many people in a small community, it's a physical incident: a car accident, a fire," says Bick, who lives on the family farm with his wife Jan. "And then everybody can gather around and comfort the families. This way, people are feeling quite helpless, because they don't know all the names of the deceased, and which families are being affected, and being confined as we are, we can't go out and comfort those that need to be, and really show the kind of support that we're all feeling for the staff and the remaining residents at the nursing home.

"It's like you're in a movie, but you have no idea why you're in that movie, or what the ending is going to be like. There have been wonderful acts of kindness. The grocery deliveries, for instance. I've had people offer to help. It's a small comfort. It's better than nothing."

Pinecrest was well-regarded. People lasted a long time there. It's a part of life: at some age, some people need to be cared for, and they are put away.

"They do go above and beyond; it's truly a family in there," says one resident who lost a parent to COVID-19. "They're not just workers; they treat you like family. They hug and kiss you. I would visit my mom, and they would hug me." Pinecrest staff have been known to attend funerals of the residents they lose.

Now there are no funerals; just obituaries posted at Hendren funeral home, and rumours. And underneath the stiff-upper-lip resilience, beneath Bobcaygeon's communal strength, something else.

"It's a just-under-the-surface fear," says Whalen, the curling club president. "People act like things are OK, how are you doing? But it's about how vulnerable we are, and, what's about to happen? There is this deep fear.

"This is different than, I accept my mortality and I'll prepare for it. This is that fear of, this could come out of the blue and strike down relatively healthy people. There is a fear and there's an anger that comes with it, that it's just so unjust.

"But it just is what it is. And guilt. God forbid, if it happens to my wife, am I going to look back and say, did I do something? Did I bring it into the house? Could I have prevented it? And I think that is going to happen for those who are left behind: could I have done something? Can you imagine?"

People say that has happened here, in Pinecrest. Nobody wants to say it out loud. A pandemic in a small town is tragedies, unfolding in slow motion.

Bobcaygeon is trying. The supportive signs, the soaring relief fund, the spirit: it is undeniable, and it is a part of why people want to live here: it is a community. They will be OK, eventually. There is an acknowledgment among some older residents that at least this wasn't Humboldt: it isn't a community being robbed of young people with their lives untold. As one resident put it, "There's so much gratitude up here. This is not going to break us or kill us; it's a sad time. If you're meant to go, you'd rather the 90-year-old go than the 6-year-old. Everybody is uplifting someone else."

But it is a theft of whatever is left, of lives almost lived. It is still theft.

"The lady who passed the other night, she was my Sunday school teacher," says Ruth McIsaac, a past president of the horticulture club, and someone who has volunteered for so many things that she once played half a camel in the local theatre's production of Aladdin. "Mrs. (Marguerite) Adams-Miller. I know her sons and daughters, and we went to church together. It's sad. But then maybe it's better because she was in a nursing home."

Ruth loses control of her emotions, just for a second. She is 68, and put her own mother in a home, once.

"Sorry. I'm not trying to be derogatory about the nursing homes, sorry. But it's sad that people who have led an active life and lived on their own and were capable of looking after themselves all of a sudden can't. They become helpless.

"My father used to say, all my friends are dying. And I think - and I'm quite sure it will happen to me, too, they ask, why am I living for? My friends are already gone, I have no purpose here. I still have my family. Your family has always been there, and always will be there. But friends give you that social outlet. We are social people.

"I think it's a sad way to go, because most of those people are on their own, and their family can't be around them ... they probably don't have that feeling of being loved. They might feel like they're left alone, but people have gone away from them. Deserted."

The people of Bobcaygeon are trying not to desert one another. The horticulture club will still plant its decorative spring beds around town, but with a couple people instead of 40. The Kinettes will still do the hanging baskets, carefully. The helpers will still help; everybody tells you, the community is stronger right now. People say one day, when this is over, there will be a party, like when the Hip stopped here in 2012, or when they set up a viewing party of Downie's final concert of his funereal tour, when Bobcaygeon filled the street with people all together, dancing, singing, loving and together in this little sainted town under the stars.

In Canada, Bobcaygeon was first. It will not be the last. And one day its people will share grief the way they used to, and love the way they used to. One day they will be together again.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur