How it Started…

Car fuel gauge on full.

How it’s going:

fuel gauge on empty

Perhaps you can relate.

A mildly annoying moment occurred on Sunday. As you likely know, the Ford government opened COVID vaccination eligibility up to those over 40. Yay! However, Toronto media reported it as those “aged 40-55”. For a moment I forgot that Toronto largely believes the world ends at Hwy 427 in the west end. Toronto’s eligibility has been 55+. But it’s not like that all over Ontario.

In the London area, as an example, eligibility has been 60+. So, when I saw 40-55 on Twitter I thought, um, what about those of us 55-60? Several Torontonians told me I’d been eligible for a while. Nope. Not here in the Forest City. And not in many other parts of Ontario. Reporting that the high end of the new vaccination eligibility was 55 only mattered to Toronto.

Our local media are largely pre-taped on weekends. Not entirely, but it’s a chore to keep up with who is live and local when and whether the news anchor is old enough to drive. So we pay more attention to Toronto on Saturdays and Sundays. But we forget that unless the rest of Ontario catches on fire, Toronto doesn’t pay much attention to us!

Hubby got his first vaccine on Monday at a pharmacy in a nearby town. An appointment there came up before his scheduled shot at an official London clinic, so we booked the early one and canceled the other. I’ve been registered for a while but I’m not in a rush. Many people are going to be ahead of me – essential workers, etc. – and I’m happy to wait my turn. Maybe a shot in the arm will fill my fuel tank a little. We’ve still got quite a distance to travel before this long, strange trip is over.

6 thoughts on “How it Started…”

  1. Toronto should be in charge. They are the centre of the universe and they elect our Federal government on our behalf. Sadly I don’t live there anymore.

  2. Vaccine eligibility is so screwed up and confusing for there is the provincial age and then local age groups as low as 35 and how and where you book will determine where you fit in. Then there were restrictions on what age groups should get a certain vaccine and others that shouldn’t. Panic has set in and decisions are being made from and emotional and not necesarily supported health stand point.

  3. Did you notice this when you lived in Toronto? When people in Toronto say “London,” they mean the one in England. I got the sense in my 10 years in T.O. that they have little clue about Southwestern Ontario.

    1. I noticed that people who had never worked in smaller towns or cities equated London with Leamington or Sarnia, as if everything outside Toronto was small and all the same.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *