Sheela Basrur Archives • Ted Barris

Public health kept a lid on SARS at Scarborough Grace Hospital in 2003, despite Health Ministry incompetence. Global News.

The news nearly killed my mother. I believe that it hastened my father’s death. In February 2003, my father suffered a debilitating stroke that stole his two most precious faculties – speech and memory. Because my parents lived in Agincourt, paramedics rushed him to Scarborough Grace Hospital.

Days later SARS struck the same floor of the hospital where my father was recovering. Nevertheless, nurses told us they could isolate Dad sufficiently so that Mom could still suit up with PPE and see him. But then the Conservative provincial government, thinking it knew better than the health-care specialists, intervened.

“For his safety,” they told my mother, “we’re isolating your father in the new PPP (public-private partnership) hospital in Brampton.”

“How is my mother, living in Agincourt, going to be able to see my father in Brampton?” I asked the office of then health minister Tony Clement.

“She can communicate with him by fax,” they recommended. (more…)

Warning sign posted at Uxbridge Arena, March 16, 2020.

We hadn’t seen each other or talked for a while. I had gone outside Sunday afternoon, partly to get some air, but also to escape the assault of bad news about the coronavirus pandemic. But suddenly this friend dropped by for a visit in my backyard. The conversation was really welcome, but of course it was mostly about things closing, Canadians trying to get home or when this all might end. Eventually I asked how he and his family were doing.

“OK, mostly,” he said, and he then gingerly explained a member of his family had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment.

“I’m sorry,” I said. But what I meant was, “Sorry that I let all this global chaos get in the way of caring about you and your family first.” (more…)