In our last issue of the 2019-2020 academic year, I wrote a note on how the COVID-19 pandemic would, beyond its obvious devastation, leave the world a better place. This time last term, I wrote about the ways in which our world needed to change, and how it seemed like it would. I wasn’t the first, nor the last, but it was the only thing important enough to start the year off by saying. What the hell, I thought, I might as well spend this blank space on hope. I could write something to remind people to have some when the world makes that feeling impossible to stoke.
A quick look down south, both at our province’s virus-ridden southern edge and across to our divided and anxious neighbours, tells us that not much we hoped for has come to pass. We wanted change, justice, peace, and a cure. Instead, all we got was a lie-fuelled riot, a tattered vaccination effort, and provincial permission to get our Christmas shopping done. Oh, not everyone celebrates Christmas or has the money this year to be able to? There were healthcare workers available to vaccinate people over the holidays? Well, I’ll be!
And so, another day rolls on. It is starting to feel like even though the seasons have come and gone, nothing has changed since March marched over us all. I find that my darkest days are those where I recognize my degree of disconnection from the world I used to know. There is no praise for doing the right thing right now. A lot of us are paid in impatience or loneliness, both from too much and too little company. We are caught between the rock of solitude and the hard place of risk. At best, we’ve got one or two places to go. At worst, we learn there was a lower place than we have already been, to tumble. If it’s not true for you, it is for someone you know. It’s been nearly a year of this shit. If you’re tired, it’s okay if it shows.
With that said, if I were to play a numbers game with you, I would bet the vast majority of you who make it this far in this small essay, will also make it through the pandemic. The human mind is a capable and resilient place, but the moment it feels some relief, what it forgets most quickly is its discomfort. I am not romanticizing that process, that’s just psychological self-preservation. The edges of today will eventually dull, memory is often softer than the feeling it stands for. This world we are in will become hard to imagine, hopefully sooner rather than later. We just have to get there.
In spite of everything, some things actually do come to a predictable end. Somehow, my time at Osgoode and as your Editor-in-Chief is coming to a close, and I realize that this is the last time I will be able to ask anything of the people who read these pages. Though some things that inspired my last request have fallen flat, one thing will always be true; to put pen to paper is to ensure your experience exists beyond the moment your experience came into being. What I am certain of is that the writers, stories, and staff of this newspaper have been recording the ephemeral present for over 90 years. Obiter’s pages have held the earliest writings of those who pioneered change, from marriage equality, to women’s rights, to the legalization of cannabis. I would say that few eras have been as fascinating, painful, and worth remembering as the one we are living through right now—though I am sure many past editors have thought the same.
Whether there’s one or one hundred of you who actually reads this, what I want as your Editor is the same thing I want as your friend. I want you to write about the world that you live in. What do you go through every day? What have you learned about the world from your living room, that you never would have known if you had permission to leave it? In 90 years, what words could you share to best capture what you’re living through? What do you want future lawyers to read about today, that would prevent today from happening again?
This paper has never been about quality journalism. It has always been more of a place to safely sow seeds of change.