A pandemic, house fires and then a massive wildfire. It sure feels like the 10 plagues have made their way to Squamish.
Times like these are trying, no doubt.
As a person whose home literally went up in flames two years ago, I can definitely empathize with what some people are going through right now.
When fire takes your home, it feels like you’re in a dream. Nothing feels real for the first week. At first, out of habit, I drove back toward what was my place in downtown, only to stop and remind myself that it was just a charred shell of what it had been.
Then I’d go and look, just to make extra sure. Yup, definitely real. It definitely happened. It was not a dream.
And then when you do process what’s happened, you feel tired. So tired.
But amidst feelings of being strangely dazed and lost, what always stood out was the overwhelming support that I and other affected people received.
The District emergency response team was amazing. The Red Cross was incredibly helpful. Folks helped raise funds for those who needed it (I didn’t ask or receive any money, as I was lucky enough to rescue most of my items of value).
As I spoke to people who recently underwent the loss of their homes in the Squamish Valley — I could see the same thing repeating.
The sense of shock, that unreal feeling, followed by the creeping worries of what to do next — that was all there in the voices of those I interviewed this week and was all very familiar. But so too was the gratefulness. The appreciation all of them spoke about in terms of how the community responded so quickly to them in their hours of need.
That’s one thing that you can rely on like clockwork in this town.
People rise to the challenge here, and hard times become the town’s finest moments.
I was listening recently to a podcast from the New York Times that mentioned extended periods of suffering have been followed by times of great prosperity.
The end of First World War and the Spanish Flu brought about the Roaring ‘20s. The end of the Great Depression and Second World War gave us the postwar boom.
Maybe our current situation is just the necessary challenge that will inevitably give way to a brighter future for us down the road.
I hope so, for all our sakes.
