It is serendipitous that our paper this week includes a story about Pink Shirt Day, the annual international day to take a stand against bullying, as well as our special feature on unsung local heroes of COVID-19.
Squamish would benefit from reflecting on both its bullies and heroes at this point in our COVID-19 journey.
Without getting into the whos, whats, and whys, online Squamish has been particularly horrible of late.
This is likely typical in small-ish towns, especially combined with COVID-19 burnout.
A quaint — to modern internet-savvy readers — New York Times article from 2011, “In small towns, gossip moves to the web and turns vicious,” chronicles how in one U.S. town, typical rural gossip morphed into “startlingly negative posts,” that forced at least one family to flee.
“The same websites created as places for candid talk about local news and politics are also hubs of unsubstantiated gossip, stirring widespread resentment in communities where ties run deep, memories run long and anonymity is something of a novel concept,” reads the article. “Whereas online negativity seems to dissipate naturally in a large city, it often grates like steel wool in small towns where insults are not easily forgotten.”
Amen to that.
While the article describes a community in the Ozarks, it could very well describe 2021 Squamish.
(FYI: The Chief’s new and improved website allows moderated commenting under stories. The site aims to be a place for a meaningful exchange of opinions. Check it out, if you haven’t already.)
Perhaps Squamish adults could take a lesson from our kids who are championing anti-bullying this week?
With this backdrop of online vitriol, we bring you a feature celebrating Squamish heroes of the pandemic.
Of course, we aim to honour Squamish doctors and nurses who continue to keep us safe and get us healthy.
We would be lost in this pandemic storm without you.
But we also want to recognize unsung heroes such as paramedics, midwives, police officers, teachers, security guards, bus drivers, cleaners, daycare workers, grocery store employees, retail workers, restaurant and fast-food servers, and baristas who keep our community running day in and day out, pandemic or not.
With the stories and advertisements in the heroes section, we say, ‘We see you, and we honour you!”
Sadly, some local heroes didn’t want to be featured as such, fearing a backlash.
(It would be Squamish awesome if readers showed support for those we featured by commenting positively under the online stories!)
Whether in our pages or not, there are plenty of essential working heroes in town.
Who has been your hero in this pandemic? Let us know with a ‘Daffodil’ of 75 words or less for next week’s paper. Send daffodils to [email protected] by Monday at 5 p.m.
Let’s show that civility wins in Squamish, even after our pink shirts are put away for the year.
