Human resources consultant Gerald Walsh says as he looks back 48 months ago, it’s hard to believe everything that took place when COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020.
“You know when I knew it was serious, when I got up one morning and I had heard the NBA had cancelled the rest of the season,” said Walsh.
The NBA, along with other professional and amateur sports, eventually returned to normal, but in March 2020, things were far from normal.
Vaccines and face masks were suddenly aspects of mainstream culture.
Shoppers lined up, sometimes for hours, outside stores. Once inside, they followed strict instructions and sometimes encountered empty shelves and supplies in low stock.
Schools were closed and students learned from home.
The majority of Canadian employees were suddenly living with a new reality: working from home.
Walsh said the pandemic recalibrated how Canadians work.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2016, seven per cent of the country’s workforce worked from home.
During the first wave of COVID-19 restrictions, that number spiked to 40 per cent in April 2020.
Almost two years later, it dropped to 30 per cent.
As of November 2023, 20 per cent of Canadians still work from home. A significant decrease, but still almost three times as much compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Working from home also brought on a technological shift felt around the world.
“We already had Skype, and Zoom was starting the time and we had meeting apps like Slack,” said Walsh. “But this accelerated the development of those platforms and now so much of our business in an office environment, is using technology.”
Small business owner Lara Cusson does not look fondly back at the pandemic’s impact on her life and career.
“We are done, and we are putting it behind us,” said Cusson, who has lingering frustration directed at all levels of government over how they handled the pandemic. “I think that small business owners have been in survival mode since that day. “
COVID-19 closures and restrictions brought a shopping boost ay big box stores and online commerce exploded.
However, smaller, independent, businesses and cafés like Cusson’s faced an existential threat.
“During this time there has been numerous closures of small businesses and organizations across Canada,” said Cusson, who added independent owners are struggling to pay back government loans and deal with interest rates that are higher than they were pre-pandemic.
