School ended for me and for my class right at the end of March Break and we hadn’t been back. We had distance learning, which was an adjustment. It was difficult for a lot of students not having the interpersonal contact with their teachers and it was the same for me. I missed my kids and I know that they missed me. By learning only through that portal, it’s really difficult to reach the kids and the specific needs that each one would have. So if you’re a hands-on learner, if you’re someone that needs a teacher over your shoulder, that aspect of learning is taken away from those students and then they’ve got to adjust.

A lot of the stresses that teachers go through every day are then placed upon the parents. They not only have to educate their kids, but they also have to then get through their daily lives and their work as well. So it’s just been pretty stressful all the way around. Then with the uncertainty of school opening again in September, even though the levels of COVID infection seem to have been decreasing in the city, it’s still a challenge moving forward.

Uncertainty is the word of the moment at this point, especially when it comes to school. There are many theories on how to reintegrate the students come September, but with social distancing and not having any place to house the kids, it’s going to be really difficult to find a way to have this be a successful venture. But the powers that be have their ideas, the teachers have their ideas and hopefully they’ll be able to come to some sort of an agreement that makes it safe for everyone involved.

The 2020 pandemic has had far and wide ranging effects on not only people, but also businesses as well and for me personally, outside of teaching, I also have my self-publishing business. So you’ve got comics and unfortunately, they were shut down for those who are in the professional ranks with an event called Pencils Down where a lot of the publishers stopped publishing during the early stages of the pandemic. What that did though was it allowed independents to continue to work and develop their ideas.

I was one of those people where I was able to kind of take a bad situation and make it as positive as possible. I used a lot of the time where I was isolated, away from everybody else and I was able to put that into developing and continuing some of my ideas. While it has been a shut down for movie productions and some comic book companies in terms of producing content, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. This year has been used to create your ideas and then hopefully get them into the marketplace for next year.

The life blood of any artist is the environment around them. So being in Stage 3 here in Kensington, in Toronto with the sounds and the people, the environment, cars, it’s just something that feeds the soul and also feeds your muse. I’m just really happy that we’re at this point and hopefully we can all work together as a community, government, industry, as well as citizens of the city and the country to make sure that we can beat COVID and get back to life as we knew before.

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