From ottawacitizen.com
George Goracz works in the restaurant industry and is a dedicated world traveller (69 countries ticked on a map on the kitchen wall) so the pandemic truly gripped him — coming and going — at home, of dreams abroad.
“I was planning a trip to Mauritius,” we safely say, are not words from the casual tourist.
When the enormity of COVID-19 restrictions began to descend in March 2020, Goracz, 63, who has a fondness for writing, began to create a record.
“I thought this is an historic event. I just have to document this. So I went out to Shoppers and got three spiral-bound notebooks.”
Well, three turned into 10, and 10 has turned into 25 — and he isn’t done yet. In his small apartment in Lowertown, Goracz has stacks of notebooks on the floor, and weeks of newspapers yet to sort through. The notebooks are a combination of hand-written diary, pasted news clippings, editorial cartoons and collections of photographs.
They capture every wave, the vaccine milestones, the number of deaths, the yo-yo ICU counts, his own travails.
“For me, it was trying to make something worthwhile out of this horrible thing. A silver lining might be someone able to come back, years from now, and read a first-hand account of how this affected us.”
He is, in fact, on to something.
In the U.K., just before the outbreak of the Second World War, a project called Mass Observation had hundreds of ordinary citizens keeping diaries of their daily lives, no matter how mundane, that later proved invaluable for historians and researchers looking into war-time social change.
Goracz was (and remains) a server at Feleena’s Mexican Cantina on Bank Street. He and co-workers lived the ups-and-downs of the early restrictions, not knowing if the initial closure would last weeks, or months, or prove economically fatal.
“I will make it through this. I will get by. I will get strong again. Went to work, found the restaurant was closed. I was in shock,” reads one of his first entries.
By the end of April 2020, he was settling into a COVID routine, and — like all of us — struggling to understand how transmissible the virus was, especially on solid surfaces, like counters or doorknobs. Sample entries from that month:
“The streets are deserted, almost all stores are closed, no one can be closer than six feet. I hold my breath passing people on the street or going on the elevator. I wish I could go down the street and have a pint of Keith’s.
“Hard to believe that we’re entering our fifth week since the shutdown. It’s like a different life now … stores closed, restaurants closed, no traffic on the street. That other life seems so foreign to me now.
“My cleaning routine when I get home now. Take off clothes, wash hands, take a shower, disinfect phone with alcohol on bathroom towel. Wipe door-handle and lock, disinfect any food or beer I bring home with sanitizer or paper towel, wash handle of my sandwich cooler for sixty seconds. Wash my hands often for sixty seconds too.”
Goracz said he was able to continue working with a construction company (a second job) but writes of the hardship caused by the loss of his restaurant income.
“I’m at work now but limping quite a bit (sore foot). Good thing $900 CERB came today and I could pay my Christmas bills.
“I like the downtime but I’m really missing the money and have to pay bills. I don’t want to hit up the federal government for more money, in case I have to pay it back.”
A movie buff, he later laments the closure of theatres.
“First movie in a long time: I choked up a bit when I crossed this threshold. It’s been five months since I’ve been here and I (usually) come three to four times a month.”
There are also entries about navigating to his cottage near Perkins, Que., when interprovincial travel was restricted, and the isolation felt by his 91-year-old mother. There are also many segments about the Freedom Convoy in February, when he could hear truck horns from 7 a.m. until midnight.
“On the fifth day, I just blew up. I was boiling mad.” He travelled to the main blockade on Wellington Street and proceeded to give any trucker a single-digit salute and a piece of his mind. (The diary has several photos.)
“I yelled at every one of them.”
Goracz plans to leave the journals with the National Archives of Canada. He is, fingers crossed, hoping to travel overseas later this year.
