Six months in review and a beautiful and blessed country.

And so ends one of the best Canada Days I have ever celebrated. The weather was spot on. I hoed three gardens and pulled out a thousand weeds. There was sweat dripping off my nose. I am practically watching my basil grow. It is a marvellous growing season. I made pesto for dinner. I have never done that in July. I balanced between being deep in thought to being content and completely free of intentional thought. A garden can take you to that place where your mind is free of worry or concern. It is a pretty prized place to be during a pandemic. It is also possible for everyone of us to find that sweet spot. It takes work. It takes discipline. It takes mindfulness. But when you learn to sweep your mind free of every anxious thought, the beauty of all that is around you slips in.

We learned about this virus six months ago and here we are celebrating our country from a well earned place of relative calm.

What did we do right? How did we end up here while so many other countries are struggling to get ahead of the pandemic?

Here is what we did:

Our federal, provincial and municipal governments became a unified force of leadership. They recognized that politicians cannot lead a country through a pandemic but health experts can.

Our politicians deferred to the health experts, the scientists and the nerdy epidemiologists.

A key border was closed.

A country was locked down.

A federal government created a financial plan that was not perfect but it stopped families from ending up on the street.

A public health care system took the reigns and moved quickly to support communities and hospitals that built COVID 19 testing sites, emptied out emergency rooms and diverted healthcare services offsite so that hospitals and ICU's could get ready for the surge. Do you remember the threat of that surge? Do you remember how frantic we were to find PPE and ventilators we did not end up needing?

Front line workers sacrificed their lives to test and treat the ill. Medical teams stood up, rallied and collaborated to build a wall of protection around our communities all while we sat at home, locked in and terrified.

Long term care facilities exposed a very vulnerable population and a horrifying weakness in that same health care system. Thousands died. We must never forget that.

Cases peaked in early April with almost 3,000 new cases on April 5th and a three day rolling average of 2,079 new cases/day. The doubling time of new cases was 2.75 days.

On June 26th there were 172 new cases in Canada, a three day rolling average of 263 and a doubling time of 223 days.

And all because we followed the public health guidelines as a country.

What a thing of beauty. Best 153rd birthday present ever. Who needs fireworks. I will take my weeds and my lonely yet comforting mindful state any day.

Tomorrow is my last day of work for a week or so. I have watched the medical community pivot into something I could never have imagined four months ago. I am tired but so proud to be a part of the team of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, administrators, laboratory and public health professionals, respiratory techs, EMS and PSW's.

I have decided to keep posting but the posts will be a bit nerdy. Only a science nerd looks forward to a week off during which I will attempt to educate these followers about the human immune system and vaccinations.

It was science, leadership, collaboration and the trusting response of every Canadian that carried us through the last six months. It will be science, leadership, collaboration and more public trust that will take us through to the end of this pandemic.

Are you ready to learn about how a vaccine works, how it is made and why we can trust the vaccine that, by the grace of God, will soon become our number one weapon against COVID 19?

Signing off on this spectacular day.

Well done Canada. What a great place to live.

Anne-Marie

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