Frontlines |
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Frontlines is a series of interviews with people working on the frontlines of this pandemic. My goal is to introduce you to some amazing people who are making it through this time in the best way they can. There is much to be learned through the experience of others.
It is my great wish that everyone will find their way through this time of upheaval, strangeness, tragedy, and hope with as much grace and learning as possible. It is a time for great reflection and change. It is a time to come together as a collective, not leaving anyone behind for their conflicting viewpoints or questionable Facebook posts. I hope we can all listen to each other, give each other space to do some stupid things and come out on top, more aware, connected, appreciative of what we have, and grateful for our tentative grasp on this world.
Enjoy. We are not alone.
It is my great wish that everyone will find their way through this time of upheaval, strangeness, tragedy, and hope with as much grace and learning as possible. It is a time for great reflection and change. It is a time to come together as a collective, not leaving anyone behind for their conflicting viewpoints or questionable Facebook posts. I hope we can all listen to each other, give each other space to do some stupid things and come out on top, more aware, connected, appreciative of what we have, and grateful for our tentative grasp on this world.
Enjoy. We are not alone.
Sandra Bernier, Emergency Front Line Supervisor, Stepping Stones homeless shelter, Nelson, BC
Late one evening, a few weeks into the COVID pandemic, a homeless man arrived at the door of the Stepping Stones shelter in Nelson, BC. He was in rough shape with flu-like symptoms, complaining of fever and aching bones. Sandra Bernier, the Emergency Front Line Supervisor at the shelter; couldn’t bear to send this sick man back out into the street. But how to deal with him? The hospital was sending any clients they sent there straight back to the shelter; they didn’t want sick people who weren’t already in critical condition. He should be quarantined, but where can a homeless man quarantine?
Sandra put on all the protective gear she had and brought the man inside, letting him stay in a small room by himself. The paramedics came, assessed him, and recommended that he get tested, but they weren’t allowed to transport him. With no safe transport means available Sandra had to convince a very upset taxi driver to take him to the testing facility. Complicating matters further, the man was addicted to alcohol and Methamphetamine and would go into withdrawal if he couldn’t drink. Challenges were stacking up quickly for dealing with the homeless population and there was nothing in place to deal with any of it.
When I met with Sandra at Lakeside Park in late April she was dressed in a pair of blue zip-front coveralls, her new work attire she tells me. She can easily zip in and out of the suit and wash it as part of her effort to keep herself, her partner, and the foster children (who stay with her periodically when their foster parents need a break) safe from COVID-19.
While Sandra’s wardrobe has become less diverse, the scope of her work has exploded since the pandemic began. Early on the shelter had to reduce the number of people they could house by half to make it possible to keep up social distancing guidelines. It wasn’t long before they were consistently turning people away. Shortly thereafter many of the staff left due to illness, medical leaves, quarantine, or because they were afraid for the health of themselves and their families and dissatisfied with the lack of danger pay. The shelter was soon running on a skeleton crew. Meanwhile, public bathrooms, the recreation center shower facilities, Salvation Army and other organizations important to the homeless were reducing services or shutting down completely.
Panhandling and recycling collection, which prior to COVID were good ways for homeless people to make money, also dropped away. Homeless people couldn’t meet their basic needs, let alone maintain hygiene standards, social distance, or quarantine, and they were coming to a crisis point quickly. “People would come to the door of the shelter and ask where can I get a shower? Where can I go to the bathroom? And I’d have to say ‘I’m sorry I don’t know, we are working really hard to get something in place,’” says Sandra.
Sandra, a problem solver by nature, soon found herself part of a team that was working non-stop to get the city and many others to take notice of the situation and get homeless people the help they needed. The team now includes outreach teams from Nelson Community Services, Interior Health, Ankors, the Salvation Army, BC Housing, Nelson Cares, and the Nelson police department. Together, Sandra and many others worked tirelessly to create protocols and action plans, and to open facilities that would enable them to help the homeless in this unprecedented situation.
“We are all bringing our resources to the table to create wrap around care for really complex individuals. It's been really heartwarming, sometimes frustratingly slow, and very rewarding. It’s been amazing to see everyone really showing up everyday and giving so much to help,” says Sandra. All the dedication and care is paying off and together the group has amassed a laundry list of accomplishments. People with pre-existing health conditions (respiratory, heart, or auto immune) are now housed at the North Shore Inn. A call out program is in place to have qualified health care workers come to the shelter if a client is displaying COVID symptoms, and an encampment with access to showers and bathrooms is operational at the Civic arena. Perhaps most importantly the group has fostered powerful and effective alliances across organizations to help the most challenging situations and individuals.
All this collaboration and program building has been inspiring for Sandra. She has watched the people staying in the Inn decrease their substance use, become healthier and happier and more creative, and seen many clients needs met in new creative ways. Sandra hopes that this will highlight the importance and potential success of using a Housing First model. The model offers permanent, affordable housing as quickly as possible to homeless people as well as supportive services and connections to the community-based supports people need to keep their housing and avoid returning to homelessness. Sandra would love to see a permanent camp where people could stay longer term, and ideally a center could be built that provides supportive housing for residents. There would be nurses and social workers on site, help with substance use issues and life skills, an art center, and more. “It would be a place where traumatized people and people in crisis could really recover and get onto a better path,” says Sandra. As part of this long-term plan, Sandra hopes to see the collaboration between organizations continue.
“I've made some really great friends who work in other organizations through dealing with this crisis. I often talk to them everyday now, and we never used to hardly engage at all. It's been sweet in that way. It's bittersweet. I wish it was for a different reason.” Sandra has found that many people, including herself, have really opened up to each other during this time. Sharing vulnerabilities and connecting on a deeper level with each other. “I think we all yearn for that but we don't always have the platform for that to come forward,” she says.
Sandra has been dedicated to social and environmental causes since she was a young teenager growing up in Toronto where she began protesting to save wilderness areas. When she was eighteen years old, she moved to BC and got involved in the environmental movement surrounding Clayoquot Sound, by twenty-one she was off volunteering in India helping the sick and dying. Then for seventeen years Sandra combined her love for nature and helping people when she facilitated the Wilderness Immersion for Self Esteem (W.I.S.E) youth program at Tipi Camp on the east shore of Kootenay Lake. The camp aimed to help people reconnect with nature, themselves, and others, while building self-esteem, compassion, empathy and life skills through experiential learning. Participants also learned about the environment, wild and medicinal plants, and how to become a steward of the earth. After leaving Tipi Camp Sandra took up her work with the homeless and has now been involved in this work for seven years.
Sandra credits her time at Tipi Camp with helping her become the frontline worker she is today. “At Tipi Camp I was able to create a positive ripple effect in peoples lives. That work made me really believe in a greater good, and in people's ability to transform,” says Sandra. She now applies what she learned at the camp to her work with the homeless. She tries to help to broaden their perspectives, encourages them to be introspective and focus on the positive things in their lives. “I tell them that they're worth it and that they're wonderful people that have had a tough road and I believe in them. I get to watch some successes and watch people get well, and also accept that they are on their path and they're going to do what they're going to do.”
“I have always wanted to share what I have,” says Sandra, “and I've also been on the receiving end when I was young and first came out west and was living rough. People took me in and gave me work and helped me out. I know what a difference that made for me and I'm now in a position that I can give back. So just keeping that flow going is really important to me. Some days I ask myself ‘why am I doing this work?’ And some days I love my job. No two days are the same.”
To keep herself sane during this stressful time, without her usual sports available, like tennis and hockey, Sandra is putting more time into playing her ukulele and gardening. She also has a breathwork routine where she imagines breathing in the chaos of the world and exhaling calmness and peace. She takes as many precautions to stay healthy as she can, taking immune boosting supplements, wearing a mask and her now trademark blue suit to work, washing her hands constantly, and sterilizing her house.
Sandra also gets inspiration to continue with her work by seeing others doing whatever they can to help. In early April, a homeless woman who was being housed at the North Shore Inn asked for some knitting yarn. When Sandra’s partner Annemarie, who is the temporary outreach worker at the Inn (she regularly works as a paramedic) returned later, the woman presented her with a knitted facemask that she had made for her. “It's little things like that,” says Sandra, “those small gestures of people doing whatever they can to help that are really inspiring and beautiful.”
One of Sandra’s challenges during this high-stress time and with her work in general, is finding ways to stop her mind from spinning endlessly, trying to solve the complex problems of homelessness and addiction. “I'm a problem solver, I really only see solutions and I always want to fix things and make things work. When faced with homelessness it's about people who are hurt and in pain and often their coping strategies are destructive, or they have addictions, and often I can't fix it. So my head spins out. I’m constantly thinking about who can I connect them with, what can I do to help, what are all the resources I can bring in, what’s going to happen, where will they live?”
Sandra uses an analogy that she learned from an important Elder in her life, Duncan Grady, of a tree in the wind with it’s roots firmly in the ground to calm her mind. “It’s about getting out of my overthinking mind, out of the treetops, swaying and blowing; and into my heart, firmly planted in the earth, like the roots of a tree. Then connecting from this grounded place with myself and others in meaningful ways, free of judgement and interpretation, while focusing on the present moment.”
“It really comes down to taking one action at a time and remembering that I am just one person. I can't save the world and it’s not going to do me any good to take that on. I can give what I have to give and then give thanks for the day. And then take time to refuel and fill my cup again.”
Sandra’s ability to give day after day is truly remarkable, and she gets results. Five weeks after the pandemic began when another homeless person arrives at the door of the shelter in need of help, Sandra and her staff have protocols and resources beyond what they have ever had to help. There are teams of workers collaborating to meet the needs of the homeless, there are safe, clean hotel rooms and encampments for them to stay in, showers and bathrooms available, and proper COVID testing is accessible. This was no small feat and it would not have happened without the tireless and persistent efforts of Sandra and others like her standing up for the most at risk at a time when many people were too busy worrying about their own needs to take notice. It is with utmost gratitude and appreciation that I say ‘thank you’ to Sandra and all the other frontline workers who dedicate so much of their lives to helping those in need.
Sandra put on all the protective gear she had and brought the man inside, letting him stay in a small room by himself. The paramedics came, assessed him, and recommended that he get tested, but they weren’t allowed to transport him. With no safe transport means available Sandra had to convince a very upset taxi driver to take him to the testing facility. Complicating matters further, the man was addicted to alcohol and Methamphetamine and would go into withdrawal if he couldn’t drink. Challenges were stacking up quickly for dealing with the homeless population and there was nothing in place to deal with any of it.
When I met with Sandra at Lakeside Park in late April she was dressed in a pair of blue zip-front coveralls, her new work attire she tells me. She can easily zip in and out of the suit and wash it as part of her effort to keep herself, her partner, and the foster children (who stay with her periodically when their foster parents need a break) safe from COVID-19.
While Sandra’s wardrobe has become less diverse, the scope of her work has exploded since the pandemic began. Early on the shelter had to reduce the number of people they could house by half to make it possible to keep up social distancing guidelines. It wasn’t long before they were consistently turning people away. Shortly thereafter many of the staff left due to illness, medical leaves, quarantine, or because they were afraid for the health of themselves and their families and dissatisfied with the lack of danger pay. The shelter was soon running on a skeleton crew. Meanwhile, public bathrooms, the recreation center shower facilities, Salvation Army and other organizations important to the homeless were reducing services or shutting down completely.
Panhandling and recycling collection, which prior to COVID were good ways for homeless people to make money, also dropped away. Homeless people couldn’t meet their basic needs, let alone maintain hygiene standards, social distance, or quarantine, and they were coming to a crisis point quickly. “People would come to the door of the shelter and ask where can I get a shower? Where can I go to the bathroom? And I’d have to say ‘I’m sorry I don’t know, we are working really hard to get something in place,’” says Sandra.
Sandra, a problem solver by nature, soon found herself part of a team that was working non-stop to get the city and many others to take notice of the situation and get homeless people the help they needed. The team now includes outreach teams from Nelson Community Services, Interior Health, Ankors, the Salvation Army, BC Housing, Nelson Cares, and the Nelson police department. Together, Sandra and many others worked tirelessly to create protocols and action plans, and to open facilities that would enable them to help the homeless in this unprecedented situation.
“We are all bringing our resources to the table to create wrap around care for really complex individuals. It's been really heartwarming, sometimes frustratingly slow, and very rewarding. It’s been amazing to see everyone really showing up everyday and giving so much to help,” says Sandra. All the dedication and care is paying off and together the group has amassed a laundry list of accomplishments. People with pre-existing health conditions (respiratory, heart, or auto immune) are now housed at the North Shore Inn. A call out program is in place to have qualified health care workers come to the shelter if a client is displaying COVID symptoms, and an encampment with access to showers and bathrooms is operational at the Civic arena. Perhaps most importantly the group has fostered powerful and effective alliances across organizations to help the most challenging situations and individuals.
All this collaboration and program building has been inspiring for Sandra. She has watched the people staying in the Inn decrease their substance use, become healthier and happier and more creative, and seen many clients needs met in new creative ways. Sandra hopes that this will highlight the importance and potential success of using a Housing First model. The model offers permanent, affordable housing as quickly as possible to homeless people as well as supportive services and connections to the community-based supports people need to keep their housing and avoid returning to homelessness. Sandra would love to see a permanent camp where people could stay longer term, and ideally a center could be built that provides supportive housing for residents. There would be nurses and social workers on site, help with substance use issues and life skills, an art center, and more. “It would be a place where traumatized people and people in crisis could really recover and get onto a better path,” says Sandra. As part of this long-term plan, Sandra hopes to see the collaboration between organizations continue.
“I've made some really great friends who work in other organizations through dealing with this crisis. I often talk to them everyday now, and we never used to hardly engage at all. It's been sweet in that way. It's bittersweet. I wish it was for a different reason.” Sandra has found that many people, including herself, have really opened up to each other during this time. Sharing vulnerabilities and connecting on a deeper level with each other. “I think we all yearn for that but we don't always have the platform for that to come forward,” she says.
Sandra has been dedicated to social and environmental causes since she was a young teenager growing up in Toronto where she began protesting to save wilderness areas. When she was eighteen years old, she moved to BC and got involved in the environmental movement surrounding Clayoquot Sound, by twenty-one she was off volunteering in India helping the sick and dying. Then for seventeen years Sandra combined her love for nature and helping people when she facilitated the Wilderness Immersion for Self Esteem (W.I.S.E) youth program at Tipi Camp on the east shore of Kootenay Lake. The camp aimed to help people reconnect with nature, themselves, and others, while building self-esteem, compassion, empathy and life skills through experiential learning. Participants also learned about the environment, wild and medicinal plants, and how to become a steward of the earth. After leaving Tipi Camp Sandra took up her work with the homeless and has now been involved in this work for seven years.
Sandra credits her time at Tipi Camp with helping her become the frontline worker she is today. “At Tipi Camp I was able to create a positive ripple effect in peoples lives. That work made me really believe in a greater good, and in people's ability to transform,” says Sandra. She now applies what she learned at the camp to her work with the homeless. She tries to help to broaden their perspectives, encourages them to be introspective and focus on the positive things in their lives. “I tell them that they're worth it and that they're wonderful people that have had a tough road and I believe in them. I get to watch some successes and watch people get well, and also accept that they are on their path and they're going to do what they're going to do.”
“I have always wanted to share what I have,” says Sandra, “and I've also been on the receiving end when I was young and first came out west and was living rough. People took me in and gave me work and helped me out. I know what a difference that made for me and I'm now in a position that I can give back. So just keeping that flow going is really important to me. Some days I ask myself ‘why am I doing this work?’ And some days I love my job. No two days are the same.”
To keep herself sane during this stressful time, without her usual sports available, like tennis and hockey, Sandra is putting more time into playing her ukulele and gardening. She also has a breathwork routine where she imagines breathing in the chaos of the world and exhaling calmness and peace. She takes as many precautions to stay healthy as she can, taking immune boosting supplements, wearing a mask and her now trademark blue suit to work, washing her hands constantly, and sterilizing her house.
Sandra also gets inspiration to continue with her work by seeing others doing whatever they can to help. In early April, a homeless woman who was being housed at the North Shore Inn asked for some knitting yarn. When Sandra’s partner Annemarie, who is the temporary outreach worker at the Inn (she regularly works as a paramedic) returned later, the woman presented her with a knitted facemask that she had made for her. “It's little things like that,” says Sandra, “those small gestures of people doing whatever they can to help that are really inspiring and beautiful.”
One of Sandra’s challenges during this high-stress time and with her work in general, is finding ways to stop her mind from spinning endlessly, trying to solve the complex problems of homelessness and addiction. “I'm a problem solver, I really only see solutions and I always want to fix things and make things work. When faced with homelessness it's about people who are hurt and in pain and often their coping strategies are destructive, or they have addictions, and often I can't fix it. So my head spins out. I’m constantly thinking about who can I connect them with, what can I do to help, what are all the resources I can bring in, what’s going to happen, where will they live?”
Sandra uses an analogy that she learned from an important Elder in her life, Duncan Grady, of a tree in the wind with it’s roots firmly in the ground to calm her mind. “It’s about getting out of my overthinking mind, out of the treetops, swaying and blowing; and into my heart, firmly planted in the earth, like the roots of a tree. Then connecting from this grounded place with myself and others in meaningful ways, free of judgement and interpretation, while focusing on the present moment.”
“It really comes down to taking one action at a time and remembering that I am just one person. I can't save the world and it’s not going to do me any good to take that on. I can give what I have to give and then give thanks for the day. And then take time to refuel and fill my cup again.”
Sandra’s ability to give day after day is truly remarkable, and she gets results. Five weeks after the pandemic began when another homeless person arrives at the door of the shelter in need of help, Sandra and her staff have protocols and resources beyond what they have ever had to help. There are teams of workers collaborating to meet the needs of the homeless, there are safe, clean hotel rooms and encampments for them to stay in, showers and bathrooms available, and proper COVID testing is accessible. This was no small feat and it would not have happened without the tireless and persistent efforts of Sandra and others like her standing up for the most at risk at a time when many people were too busy worrying about their own needs to take notice. It is with utmost gratitude and appreciation that I say ‘thank you’ to Sandra and all the other frontline workers who dedicate so much of their lives to helping those in need.
Dharma Mcbride, Doctor, Nelson, BC
A late afternoon chill is in the air when I meet with Dr. Dharma McBride on the lawn of my home. As a doctor in the emergency room as well as at a clinic in Nelson, BC, Mcbride is on the front lines during this tragic, busy, and hopeful time.
“Things are happening incredibly quickly, unlike I've ever seen before, organizations are saying yes and funding is coming through and it makes it really easy to move forward. So much of the bureaucratic slowness has just melted away and people are saying, yes, we can do this together.” Mcbride is spearheading the creation of a special respiratory clinic at the hospital where all the appropriate COVID precautions can be implemented more easily than in a typical clinic, whereby creating a safer environment for doctors and patients. Although the project has made life very busy for him, he’s finding that being involved and active at this time has helped take his mind off the chaos and instilled a much-needed sense of hope and control.
At home McBride has been de-stressing by doing extra chores, cleaning, getting regular exercise, and spending more time relaxing with his partner Lia and their pets. Life is simplifying and becoming more domestic for Mcbride and he is finding value and joy in it.
“I've always suffered from FOMO (fear of missing out), now it's partially replaced with JOMO, the joy of missing out. There's all sorts of research on the paradox of choice and how having too many choices can be stressful.” Having limited choices to make, he says, lands him more squarely in the present moment, since he isn’t thinking as much about what to do next because there aren’t as many options.
As we talk Mcbride sets his mug of warm tea down regularly to rinse his hands with hand sanitizer from a bright green bottle that he placed on the table in front of him when he arrived.
Perhaps surprisingly, in this simpler but distanced time, Mcbride is finding an increased sense of connection with others. Patients check in with him more often and ask how he’s doing, and he feels more available and real in conversations in general. I agree that this sense of connection seems to be expanding in some ways even with the lack of physical connection. Everyone on the street takes the time to say hello and smile, conversations with neighbours often involve real feeling and bonding. Many of us are reengaging with our family and close friends. People are looking out for each other like never before. It is clear that through shared challenge comes bonding, and it is happening now. We are indeed all in this together, subjected to the same stresses, difficulties and hardships, and rallying around those that keep us safe, fed, and informed.
“I think we crave being part of a collective. There's a huge solace in knowing that you're connected to everyone else and part of that together,” says Mcbride. “The pandemic is definitely redirecting our normally individualistic culture into a more collective one in a big way.”
As we near the end of our interview and the sun creeps closer to the mountainside the cacophony begins, a chorus of clanging pots and pans, then shouts, then the air horn. We shout back, an unseen neighbour responds, then another, and another. The chorus is all around us and in us. A feeling of warmth rises in my chest. We are not alone here.
As Dharma gets on his bike to leave, he poses a question to me. “So, when this passes over, as it eventually will, how do we learn from this, what do we take away, there is so much potential here, how do we remember and change the way we live for the better?”
“Things are happening incredibly quickly, unlike I've ever seen before, organizations are saying yes and funding is coming through and it makes it really easy to move forward. So much of the bureaucratic slowness has just melted away and people are saying, yes, we can do this together.” Mcbride is spearheading the creation of a special respiratory clinic at the hospital where all the appropriate COVID precautions can be implemented more easily than in a typical clinic, whereby creating a safer environment for doctors and patients. Although the project has made life very busy for him, he’s finding that being involved and active at this time has helped take his mind off the chaos and instilled a much-needed sense of hope and control.
At home McBride has been de-stressing by doing extra chores, cleaning, getting regular exercise, and spending more time relaxing with his partner Lia and their pets. Life is simplifying and becoming more domestic for Mcbride and he is finding value and joy in it.
“I've always suffered from FOMO (fear of missing out), now it's partially replaced with JOMO, the joy of missing out. There's all sorts of research on the paradox of choice and how having too many choices can be stressful.” Having limited choices to make, he says, lands him more squarely in the present moment, since he isn’t thinking as much about what to do next because there aren’t as many options.
As we talk Mcbride sets his mug of warm tea down regularly to rinse his hands with hand sanitizer from a bright green bottle that he placed on the table in front of him when he arrived.
Perhaps surprisingly, in this simpler but distanced time, Mcbride is finding an increased sense of connection with others. Patients check in with him more often and ask how he’s doing, and he feels more available and real in conversations in general. I agree that this sense of connection seems to be expanding in some ways even with the lack of physical connection. Everyone on the street takes the time to say hello and smile, conversations with neighbours often involve real feeling and bonding. Many of us are reengaging with our family and close friends. People are looking out for each other like never before. It is clear that through shared challenge comes bonding, and it is happening now. We are indeed all in this together, subjected to the same stresses, difficulties and hardships, and rallying around those that keep us safe, fed, and informed.
“I think we crave being part of a collective. There's a huge solace in knowing that you're connected to everyone else and part of that together,” says Mcbride. “The pandemic is definitely redirecting our normally individualistic culture into a more collective one in a big way.”
As we near the end of our interview and the sun creeps closer to the mountainside the cacophony begins, a chorus of clanging pots and pans, then shouts, then the air horn. We shout back, an unseen neighbour responds, then another, and another. The chorus is all around us and in us. A feeling of warmth rises in my chest. We are not alone here.
As Dharma gets on his bike to leave, he poses a question to me. “So, when this passes over, as it eventually will, how do we learn from this, what do we take away, there is so much potential here, how do we remember and change the way we live for the better?”
Special thanks to Luanne Armstrong for donating her time to edit these articles.