Not An Easy Year

Jeff Green | Dec 21, 2022

Remember the idea of us all being 'alone together', the idea that we were all in the fight against COVID together.

That seems so 2020, doesn’t it

By the winter of 2022 there was little good will left In its place was an unprecedented protest and occupation in Ottawa and at border crossings across the country.

The recent inquiry into the use of the Federal Emergency Measures Act this past February, revealed that there was more confusion and disorganisation on both sides of the protest than we knew about at the time.

In our Eastern Ontario communities, the reaction to the protest revealed a lot about our own divisions, and anger and disenchantment spilled into our communities, expressed in letters to our newspaper, conversations on the street, and even in the municipal election campaign 8 months after the streets of Ottawa were cleared.

Normally we keep our political and philosophical differences under check, but that broke down a bit this year, while it was uncomfortable and there are rifts between some of us that will not heal easily, or ever, in retrospect maybe it is good to air our differences as a society ever now and again.

COVID restrictions are gone and are not coming back. New issues are facing us – some transitory but acute, such as the housing boom and bust, inflation and perhaps even a recession, and some are chronic – the health care crisis, climate change spring to mind.

No one will really miss 2022, just as much as no one missed 2021 or 2020 when they ended.

But in 2023 we may have an opportunity to work together, to rebuild some of the severed connections of the past 3 years, and to embrace the positive change that an influx of new people in our communities will bring. People have arrived as the result of COVID, the changes in the housing market, and the growing appreciation for what those of us who were already here knew; rural living is full of joys and benefits.

We look forward to celebrating all of that in the pages of the Frontenac News.