Year in review: A look back at the year in news, 4-7, 11-16 COVID-19: A look at Delta’s response to the pandemic, 5 THURSDAY
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DECEMBER 31
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2020
YEAR IN SPORTS
A look back at some top stories, 20
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM ALL OF US AT THE DELTA OPTIMIST
Newsmaker of the year: Dr. Bonnie Henry
Bonnie Henry is the 2020 Glacier Media Newsmaker of the Year. It was an easy decision. Henry, a physician with a background in community medicine, is a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia and was appointed provincial health officer in 2018. She has earned an international reputation for her leadership from the outset of the pandemic in guiding British Columbia and influencing other jurisdictions on the measures needed to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Her candid, calm, empathic daily direction and a prescribed mixture of public restrictions and permissions helped B.C. flatten the curve earlier than most everywhere and has kept the caseload more manageable, even as people spent more time indoors and were more susceptible to spreading the coronavirus. Business in Vancouver’s Hayley Woodin, Tyler Orton and Kirk LaPointe spoke with Henry across Zoom on behalf of Glacier Media in early December, one week before the first vaccines arrived in B.C. Here is an excerpt of their discussion, edited for clarity and brevity. Take us back to how you had to expand the work of the office at the first sign of the pandemic.
Henry: We have a very small office and still do. We tend to be very small and nimble. But we started to see the warning signs in late December, early January, and it was a bit of disbelief that we had to overcome. This is something that I have spent a lot of time on in my career over the last 30 years, preparing for things like this and seeing the signs and knowing what could potentially happen. It was quite challenging for all of us, I think, to really get going and to understand that this was going to affect us. But I don’t think anybody could have predicted how severely it would affect us around the world. I think it would be fair to say that as this pandemic has evolved, so too have people’s attitudes toward the provincial government and your office and the general handling of the pandemic. When do you think that honeymoon period ended after the initial praise? Henry: This is also something that was not a surprise to me. We know that when you go through crises, there’s a transition period that happens. But I’ve been saying from the very beginning that I know that the recriminations, the class action lawsuits and the public inquiries are coming. And I know that because I have been through these before. And we have seen these things before.
PHOTO VIA ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY
Provincial health officer Bonnie Henry: “that approach of us doing this together helps people recover from the trauma of the crisis that we’re going through.”
So yes, [the honeymoon ended] very early on. What we tried to do was instill that ... we do have some control, there are things that we can do, but we need to support each other to do it. And when we didn’t know what was happening, and it was very scary for all of us, [with] a lot of anxiety and uncertainty – that is what helped us get through. And we did really well with that. The challenge becomes
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when this goes on for a long time. And there’s changes, things that are we’re learning ... that are changed from one minute to the next. And as we came into the fall, [we] tried to make sure that we were opening up as much as we could, doing it in a safe way. And it’s tiring, we’re all exhausted, so it doesn’t surprise me at all when there’s a lot of fear and anxiety, that people need somebody to
complain to, somebody to be concerned about. And I knew that was part of my role in this whole thing. We know with this type of crisis that goes on this long, you can never do just enough. There are always people who are accusing us of doing too much, or not enough, and finding that balance is incredibly difficult and changing minute by minute. CONTINUED: see Page 3
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