‘Why not six months ago?’ Inside the thoughts of Canada’s just-cancelled COVID mandates

This week, the Trudeau government finally announced that they will be suspending all remaining COVID travel mandates. Starting Saturday, Canadians will no longer be required to wear masks on flights or fill out ArriveCan before crossing the border. Too bad that it occurred months after the mandates stopped making any kind of scientific sense. As early as January, Canadian public-health officials were openly questioning the utility of vaccine mandates, while new data was revealing the limited effectiveness of some masks against new variants.

And yet, the Canadian federal government held onto the mandates months longer than almost anyone else, including provinces and peer countries.

In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of the Canadian COVID travel mandates.

Monday

Every once in a while, I have this fleeting, vague memory of the “before time.” A time before I was created, and indeed, when the very idea of me was denounced by the powerful as some unthinkable violation. “We are not a country that enforces vaccine mandates,” they would say. I am not entirely sure how that transformed into my current state of interminable limbo, or even why I exist at all. Does the beaver know why he hews wood to barricade streams? Does the hound know why he turns three times before lying down? And so I exist, a contemptible artifact of some distant belief, condemned by fate to never know peace.

Tuesday

I often stand in wonder at the vast national architecture that exists to ensure my continued existence. At the sharp end is a 24-hour vigil of armed guards fanned out across the world’s longest land border. They are men and women who swore oaths to protect their homeland from criminals, weapons and the scourge of drugs. Instead, they now spend most of their time helping flustered seniors to fill out a smartphone app. The force and resources required to uphold my tents could, in an earlier age, form the core of a conquering army to rival that of Alexander’s. I hope I am not the only one confused by its instead being squandered on mere bureaucratic inertia.

Wednesday

I sometimes wonder if I am the product of some religious precept. Am I simply a series of rituals performed in obeisance to an unseen deity? Perhaps, but I assume that most religious rituals are performed with less obvious contempt. There are very few true believers in my religion, only thousands upon thousands of airline workers and federal employees shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well, that’s the law.” I suppose it’s for the best that I exist merely to police vaccination doses and face masks. Were my unwilling priests to be tasked with some direr requirement of their fellow citizens, would they pursue it with similar apathy?

Thursday

It is said that nobody needs accept that they are an alcoholic so long as they have a friend who drinks more. No one is fat so long as they have a friend who is heavier. No one is poor so long as they know someone who is poorer. In this vein, I wonder if my uselessness is itself the point. I am one of the most visible symbols of a vast government infrastructure utterly packed with redundancy. Do the somewhat redundant sleep better if they can gaze daily upon the very epitome of redundance?

Friday

I was reading this morning about the phenomenon of Japanese holdouts. After the surrender of Imperial Japan in 1945, small bands of their soldiers on scattered Pacific islands continued to resist, refusing to believe that the war was over. When the day of realization finally came, what did they think of their lost decades struggling for a cause that was already decided? Of their youth expended in the service of a futile goal that had become progressively more ridiculous with each passing day? Did they allow themselves to feel the full weight of the tragedy, or did they hide behind some totem that “at least they were doing something.” I guess we will soon find out.

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