COVID Diary: First Wave, Spring 2020

This book is a journal of the impact of the first wave of the highly contagious COVID-19 virus on Canada, within the context of a worldwide pandemic. It records the origin and nature of the novel virus threat; the response of the World Health Organization (WHO), and of government and public health agencies; the evolving scientific knowledge; and the social and economic costs of the pandemic during its initial impact stage.

The daily entries cover the period from March 2020 to May 2020 during which the number of new cases and deaths soared, lockdowns were implemented, massive financial aid programs were introduced, parliament was deprived of its oversight over government expenditures, and a shortage of medical supplies called into question the global supply chain. The diary ends with the provinces easing into a phased re-opening of the economy amidst fears of a second wave, a questioning of the necessity of imposing a national lockdown during a pandemic, and criticism of the Canadian government for its failure to close the border at an early date to protect Canadians against the importation of a deadly virus from abroad.

This book was initially published in 2020 under a different title, Coronavirus Canada, The Politics, Science and Economics of a Pandemic, Volume One: The Pandemic, which was to be followed by a volume on the recovery period. However, the original book title is no longer appropriate; the pandemic virus is now universally referred to as COVID, rather than by its original designation as a coronavirus. Moreover, when first published the book was regarded as a journal of the pandemic in Canada, but several subsequent waves of infections rendered it instead a record of the impact of the first wave of the spring of 2020.

This second edition includes corrections to the text.

Robert W. Passfield is a retired public historian who has published in the fields of industrial archaeology, public works history, heritage conservation, and intellectual history. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario (Honours History, 1968) and from McMaster University (MA, 1969), where he also pursued PhD studies in Canadian History and three minor fields: political philosophy, modern European history and diplomatic history. In graduate school he undertook to prepare a dissertation on 'The Upper Canadian Tory Mind', which was to focus on the Anglican Tories of the Province of Upper Canada (Ontario) in the post-War of 1812 period. After a forty-year hiatus, that abortive thesis was incorporated into a book, The Upper Canadian Anglican Tory Mind: A Cultural Fragment (2018), to which a companion, Anglican Toryism in Upper Canada: The Critical Years, 1812-1840, was published in 2020.