Two events stand out for me in those 10
days on the road. We visited the Centre Belle-Alliance in Summerside, a center with a school, a daycare, halls for cultural events, a library, and the offices of various francophone
organizations. Diane and I met a few dozen of the people who work there and
some of the children at the daycare center. None of them wore masks. I was,
at first, taken aback by this, but slowly realized that this was not
carelessness on their part. There are no active cases of Covid-19 in PEI. It was refreshing to see the noses and smiling mouths of so many people! I
left that center with a renewed sense of hope because I encountered there a vital
francophone community managing not only to survive in an overwhelmingly anglophone
environment but to thrive and live fully as francophones. There was hope also
in seeing a community that had been able to shed not only face masks, but also
the fear of being and living close to one another.
The second event occurred on our journey
back to Ottawa. On the way to PEI, we saw many road signs alerting us to
possible intrusions of deer and moose on highways. I jokingly said to Diane
that these were false advertising because we were promised sightings that never
materialized. However, on the stretch of
the TransCanada Highway between Quebec City and Trois-rivières, we finally saw
a young deer crossing the road a hundred meters ahead of us. I was struck by
the grace and beauty of this wild animal and silently reflected that the road
signs may not be “false advertising”, but certainly were a very poor rendering of
the majesty of these exquisite creatures.
Our trip to PEI was a pilgrimage of
healing. It has allowed us to shed some of the fear that has more or less unconsciously draped
us for so many months and to see reality again unveiled
and from a perspective that cannot be rendered by road signs or through a
computer or TV screen.
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