By the time Covid-19 hit Canada, the rest of the world was already experiencing the tragic effects of this virus, we were ramping up our strategies to contain it. Unfortunately the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta were hit hardest and by the time we had our first case in Manitoba it was March 12th. Most of the business sector voluntarily closed their doors and went home which greatly helped to contain the virus. We are now at April 30 and to date we have 273 cases with 6 deaths, our cases are currently growing by 1-2 cases a day, sometimes 0. Premier Brian Pallister announced yesterday that Manitoba will begin to re-open on Monday, May 4th and the list is vast enough to get people back to their jobs and restart the economy. He has done an absolutely smashing job along with many other folks to get us up and running in order to save the economy from complete collapse. Here is our re-opening plan! And people joke about Winnipeg all the time as being one of the most undesirable cities to live in, but hey, am I glad I do!
https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/restoring/phase-one.html
Restoration
Everyone knew the water would rise,
but nobody knew how much.
The priest at Santa Croce said, God
will not flood the church.
When the Arno broke its banks,
God entered as a river, let His mark high
above the altar.
He left nothing untouched:
stones, plaster, wood.
You are all my children.
The hem of His garment, which was
the river’s bottom sludge,
swept through Florence, filling cars and cradles,
the eyes of marble statues,
even the Doors of Paradise. And the likeness
of His son’s hands, those pierced palms soaked
with water, began to peel like skin.
The Holy Ghost appeared
as clouds of salted crystals
on the faces of saints, until the intonaco
of their painted bodies stood out from the wall as if
they had been resurrected.
This is what I know of restoration:
in a small room near San Marco,
alone on a wooden stool
nearly every day for a year,
I painted squares of blue on gessoed boards—
cobalt blue with madder rose, viridian,
lamp black—pure pigments and the strained yolk
of an egg, then penciled notes about the powders,
the percentages of each. I never asked
to what end I was doing what I did, and now
I’ll never know. Perhaps there was one square
that matched the mantle of a penitent, the stiff
hair of a donkey’s tail, a river calm beneath a bridge.
I don’t even know what I learned,
except the possibilities of blue, and how God enters.
Mary Cornish
