Women of the Pandemic

by Lauren McKeon

  “I THINK IT’s IMPORTANT TO CRY. SO MUCH SUFFERING HAS HAPPENED.”

  Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health

  Seven

  EVERY DECISION COUNTS

  Deena Hinshaw’s daily press conferences could reasonably be renamed Guided Meditation for Pandemic Times. When the provincial chief medical officer of health takes the podium, her voice is calm, clear, and steady—her competence and directness combine to feel grounding, not unlike gently spattering rain, softly trilling birds, or your own deep breaths. This effect remains in place even, and perhaps especially, when she delivers the details of Alberta’s sobering new reality. “Previously shared yesterday, as you know, I was tested for COVID-19,” opened Hinshaw, in an address to the province on March 17, 2020, St. Patrick’s Day. “And I am pleased to let you know that my test results were negative and that I am feeling better this morning.” She went on to order the province’s first set of public health measures: a limit on mass gatherings and a closure of everything from casinos and bingo halls to libraries and swimming pools to bars and nightclubs. “I know this will disappoint many,” she acknowledged, “but we must take action.” She continued with why the restrictions were important, and how they would help the entire province. She explained the concept of flattening the curve. And again and again she refused to minimize how much it all would suck. “The measures introduced today will be hard on all of us,” she closed, “but I believe we are ready and able to rise to the challenge before us.”

  During the briefing, Hinshaw wore a grey dress, with the periodic table emblazoned across her arms and chest. The very cool, very scientific wardrobe choice seemed to further win over anxious Albertans. Within days, media had declared, “Alberta Loves Dr. Hinshaw, and Her Periodic Table Dress.” It was a fair assumption. Tweets praising the doctor flooded social media. “Can we take a moment to recognize how cool Dr. Hinshaw is?” wrote one user, gushing over both dress and doctor. “How is she not Alberta’s premier?” Another Albertan wrote, “Is it too soon to talk about the fact that Dr. Hinshaw has the periodic table on her dress and that I want to be her when I grow up?” Some fans joked that she could have a share of their hoarded toilet paper, while others noted that if Hinshaw could come to their “collective houses and read Albertans a bedtime story we’d all be sleeping better.” An Edmonton singer-songwriter crafted lyrics that included the lines, “She’s saving all the octogenarians / She reminds me of one of my favourite librarians.” And, after being pleasantly bombarded with requests for the dress—and praise for Hinshaw—the garment’s B.C.-based designer decided to re-release the previously discontinued design. It sold out almost immediately. The description for the dress now notes, “Yes, this is the dress you’ve been seeing Dr. Deena Hinshaw wearing on the news.”

  The dress was only the beginning. In the early months of the pandemic, Hinshaw was ushered into the role of province-wide folk hero—whether she wanted the newfound fame or not (she didn’t). Fuelling all that adoration, however, was one difficult decision after another. At the same press conference where she wore The Dress, a journalist asked Hinshaw to clarify whether the new public health rules were based on her recommendations. They were, of course. Though she had an excellent team, and the combined knowledge of the other provincial and territorial health officers across the country, the weight of the province’s health decisions ultimately teetered on her shoulders. It was “absolutely unnerving,” said Hinshaw, to rely on the rapidly evolving, question-inducing information about the virus to make those decisions. She didn’t have a crystal ball, she couldn’t see into the future; she had to make decisions based on what she knew, and nobody knew very much at all.

  What they did know could easily fast-forward out of date. In one Friday briefing in March, she swore that she would not close schools. On Monday, she closed them. Hinshaw had to make a lot of one-eighty decisions like that: telling people asymptomatic carriers couldn’t transmit the virus, then warning they could; saying don’t wear masks, then definitely do. If the virus was a monster, it was a shapeshifting one. Blink once and it looked like influenza. Blink again and it looked like SARS. Blink a third time and it looked like neither of those things. Alberta didn’t get its first case until March 5—so much later than the other provinces that Hinshaw actually wondered if the new coronavirus had arrived in Alberta undetected. She felt the same awful anticipation so many others have described. She wondered, briefly, if something about Alberta was protecting the province. Then everything moved in a hundred directions, thousands of rubber bands snapping. All the theoretical plans already in place were considered and, one by one, gradually abandoned. “In the time span between when we had our first case and two weeks later,” Hinshaw said, “we did many things that were beyond what we had originally anticipated.” From that point on, it was a blur.

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  The SARS-CoV-2 virus is unthinking and unfeeling. It goes without saying that the virus doesn’t have a gender equality agenda. Nonetheless, it has managed to upend every historical and cultural reference we have for who should lead us through crisis, and how. Across Canada, and in countries around the world, compassion, kindness, and collaboration rose like cream throughout the first year of the pandemic—largely thanks to the women leaders who embraced these traits. We gravitated toward people like Hinshaw, B.C.’s Bonnie Henry, the federal government’s Theresa Tam, and P.E.I.’s Heather Morrison precisely because they seemed to eschew the bravado, brashness, and unwavering ego that makes many male leaders so popular, in both the present and past. These women were neither certain nor infallible; they were honest and human. It made them all the more compelling, all the more comforting. Arguably, their fanbase grew not because they were untouchable or because they gave rousing, ear-blistering speeches, but because they communicated clearly, consistently, and with others’ best interests at heart. Their lives felt attainable. They struggled just like you, broke just like you, knew it was hard and impossible, just like you. If this vulnerability and relatability felt surprising, it also felt necessary.

  Alison Van Rosendaal, an assistant principal in Calgary, said of Hinshaw, “I just love watching her.” Van Rosendaal believes that media, government, and plain general discourse have conditioned many of us to expect populist rhetoric and, in return, to fit our own response to any issue, no matter how complex, into equally rigid camps. She appreciated that Hinshaw didn’t turn all the crowded fear into a blunt instrument, that she seemed uninterested in both soundbites and easy solutions. “She let the things that were messy, stay messy,” said Van Rosendaal, explaining what drew her to the unofficial Hinshaw fan club. “She repeatedly said, ‘We don’t have the solution. We don’t have the knowledge base. We don’t have the research.’ ” Rather than that feeling frustrating, however—as in, “Well what do you have?”—it felt refreshing. Van Rosendaal had only to look at the U.S. to see what could happen when political agendas infiltrated infectious disease management, how false claims and disingenuous solutions could ransack a country’s response. Hinshaw might have to apologize for getting public policy wrong every now and then, but at least nobody was drinking bleach.

  Van Rosendaal remembered the March 16 briefing, before Hinshaw announced her (first) negative COVID-19 test, as the one that won her over. That day, Hinshaw had addressed the province from home, via a flat screen, seated in front of walls lined with book shelves. She talked about how she was isolating herself from her family and about the configuration of her house, acknowledging how tough it was and recognizing her privilege for being able to do so. It struck Van Rosendaal, who has three children, including one teenager, and also three grandchildren, that Hinshaw was doing a difficult, demanding job within the same constraints she’d asked everyone else to work within—and that she wasn’t afraid to admit it. At the time, Van Rosendaal was watching the briefing across the street at her sister’s house (though within two weeks, she and her si
ster would be staying isolated in their own homes). The two joked that they needed Hinshaw T-shirts. As they talked about how much they appreciated Hinshaw and batted around ideas on what, exactly, those shirts would look like, and what a tagline might be, a lightbulb clicked on for Van Rosendaal: “What Would Dr. Hinshaw Do?”

  Her sister loved it, and Van Rosendaal decided she’d actually get one made, solely because it would be amusing. They’d laugh, and have a fun shirt to wear with their new hero on it. Shortly after, she was awake in bed at 2:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, staring at her ceiling, thinking about the shirt. Unable to sleep, Van Rosendaal went to her computer and transformed a screenshot photo of Hinshaw with her hands open wide. She gave her sunglasses and a rope of necklaces, centring the cheeky, and not-quite-rhetorical, question on the black-and-white rendering. She got ten shirts made, keeping one for herself and giving the others to her sister, as well as to some local health heroes. Her delighted sister, Julie, a cookbook author and food editor, posted a photo of the shirt on her social media accounts, where her followers all immediately seemed to want one. One person posted, “I am very, very, very jealous right now.” Others suggested the design should go on an infinity scarf (another favourite Hinshaw fashion choice) or should come with a periodic table print. One comment in particular seemed to sum it all up: “I know everyone’s asking, but are these for sale?”

  “It was this common sentiment bubbling up of, ‘Oh, we love her,’ ” Van Rosendaal told me. She found a small manufacturer in nearby Red Deer and decided to make a few shirts, sell them, and give the proceeds to some local food banks. She picked ten organizations across Alberta, including several located in Indigenous communities. It would be easy enough, she thought, to do this one good thing. In fact, she was volunteering at a 5 p.m. shift at a food bank shortly after announcing the shirt sale when her phone started chiming notifications. Safety precautions meant she couldn’t touch her phone during the shift, so Van Rosendaal had to listen and wonder. Ching, ching, ching. By the end of the shift, she’d already sold two thousand dollars’ worth of shirts. The next day, sales had climbed so high she thought, This is no longer a lark and Shit, I should have asked Dr. Hinshaw if this was okay. She reached out, and Hinshaw gave an uncomfortable blessing. Within four days, Van Rosendaal had sold more than twenty thousand dollars in T-shirts. She can’t be sure why the shirts were so popular, but she thinks it was because, to many people, Hinshaw felt like hope.

  “These new heroes that are coming out of the pandemic are such a positive for the world,” said Mandy Stobo, “not just for the pandemic, but forever.” Stobo is a Calgary-based artist who is known for her Bad Portrait series—bright pop-art watercolour-and-Sharpie portraits of people she admires. She created one of Hinshaw first, inspired by the doctor’s bravery, determination, and poise. Soon after, Stobo started creating portraits of other healthcare workers and health officers. “Once you look past Alberta,” she added, “it was pretty consistent: the theme of these incredible women taking the pandemic by the horns and steering us in the right direction.” She created colourful portraits of Henry and Tam, then added Newfoundland’s Janice Fitzgerald, Ottawa’s Vera Etches, and Toronto’s Eileen de Villa. To her, each woman had become a modern icon worth lauding. Stobo decided to license the portraits for free to people who were doing fundraisers, helping however she could. In doing so, she joined Van Rosendaal and countless others who had decided to publicly honour Canada’s new set of leaders with T-shirts, art, shoes, fundraisers, songs, graffiti, fan clubs, signs, coffee mugs, stationery, and more. The accolades vibrated against the fear, an undercurrent of appreciation, admiration, and support.

  It isn’t often we see women leaders so widely celebrated during a crisis—in part because it’s still far too uncommon for us to see women lead communities and countries at all (not to mention companies, courtrooms, civil organizations, media rooms, and the list goes on). The reversal did not go unnoticed in Canada and beyond. In addition to Tam’s chief spot at the federal level, six of the top doctors in the country’s thirteen provinces and territories were women. So too were many health officers at the municipal level. Together, they showed us a new way to lead. They defied hate, deliberate misinformation, partisanship. Tam openly, repeatedly condemned anti-Asian racism. (Whereas some male leaders, such as Ontario Conservative MP David Sloan, who asked “Does [Tam] work for China?” and tweeted “Dr. Tam must go! Canada must remain sovereign over decisions,” instead focused on sowing division.) Henry’s signature phrase, “Be kind, be calm, be safe,” became the country’s unofficial mantra. We connected so deeply to these women of the pandemic not because they were perfect or unhindered, but because, in so many ways, they were us: frazzled and afraid, determined and compassionate, facing down an unfathomable future, each of them simply doing the best that they could. Under pressure, these women were graceful and stoic, but also tired, sad, and keenly aware of loss.

  Their voices broke when they talked about missing their families. They choked back tears when they acknowledged just how hard it all was, and asked us to keep doing everything that made it hard. “I ended up showing some emotion in public—not because I wanted to, but because it happened. It made it real for all of us,” Heather Morrison, P.E.I.’s chief health officer, told me, referring to a press conference during which she asked Islanders to continue being patient, to continue being kind. “I wouldn’t recommend crying on TV, but it happened.” The honesty only made people love her more. An MLA named a new calf after her. Kids hosted a virtual superhero-themed party and some dressed up as her. Like with other leaders, people made T-shirts with her likeness on them—a thing that Morrison said she would never have believed, not in a million years, if you’d told her at the beginning of 2020. She has tried her best to be a calm voice in the storm. Similar to Hinshaw, she has not shied away from admitting errors and has been upfront about what she does, and does not, know. She too led with compassion, kindness, patience, and common sense. She too put everyone else—her entire province—first.

  This near-universal approach from women leaders wasn’t just humane; it was effective. When I spoke to Morrison in early August, for example, her tiny province had experienced no COVID-19 deaths; that remained the case into October. At the international level, studies of the world’s 194 countries have shown that women national leaders fared better in terms of both infection and mortality rates. One possible reason, researchers found, is that, unlike men, women appeared to approach the crisis with one top mandate: to save lives. On average, they announced lockdowns twenty-five deaths earlier than their male counterparts. For better or worse, during the first wave, they prioritized health over the economy. These leaders totalled fewer than twenty and notably included Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, and Finland’s Sanna Marin. (To account for the disparity in numbers, the study compared each woman-led country with an analogous, nearby male-led one.)

  As the Guardian put it, “Plenty of countries with male leaders…have done well. But few with female leaders have done badly.” In April, the Atlantic even posited that Ardern might be “the most effective leader on the planet” for the way she was handling the pandemic. In the early months, she exemplified empathy but also an unbreakable commitment to valuing human life before anything else. As Ardern herself said when she announced increased mass shutdowns in her country, “The worst-case scenario is simply intolerable. It would represent the greatest loss of New Zealanders’ lives in our country’s history. I will not take that chance.” And neither would many others.

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  Kami Kandola wasn’t about to wait for the Northwest Territories to get its first case. On March 18, in response to her urging, the territory declared a public health emergency—an order it would go on to extend at least fourteen times. As the N.W.T.’s chief public health officer, and someone who had been working in the North for more than seventee
n years, Kandola knew the vast expanse of land wasn’t particularly populous. In fact, at just under forty-five thousand people, the entire territory was smaller than most suburban cities in Canada. Some of the N.W.T.’s thirty-three communities are home to only about a hundred people; one, Kakisa, has fewer than fifty residents. Many of them are only accessible by plane, and few of them are linked to major roads. In some ways, their remoteness made them seem like the safest places in Canada to avoid community transmission. Certainly, that’s why in March 2020 one misguided Quebec couple sold their possessions and attempted to flee to Old Crow, an Indigneous community of 250, located in Yukon, one territory over from the N.W.T. The community’s chief, Dana Tizya-Tramm, politely told them to get lost. Old Crow could barely house the residents it did have; there was no space for the couple. More than that, though, he had the same fear as Kandola: that one COVID-19 case could raze a far-flung Indigenous community in the North. Their protection was in their isolation; break it and, potentially, break everything.

  “I know how outbreaks can be started,” said Kandola. “When it comes to infectious diseases Indigenous communities bear the brunt of the burden.” That has been true for more than three hundred years, starting when settlers first brought tuberculosis (TB) to the southeast. By the 1930s and ’40s, the TB death rate among those living on reserves was the highest ever reported in a human population. The next decade, at least one-third of Inuit were infected. By 2008, the TB rate among Indigenous people was six times higher than the overall Canadian rate. In Nunavut, it was thirty-eight times the national average. And while tuberculosis provides one of the starkest examples, it’s well documented that Indigenous peoples across Canada experience higher rates of heart disease; certain sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS; some cancers; and even dementia. Rates of diabetes are staggeringly higher—a particular concern during the COVID-19 outbreak, as the disease has been reported to drastically elevate risk of serious damage from the virus.