On the doorstep of what would become the COVID-19 crisis of spring 2020, a wise woman I encountered called me out on the distinction between hope and expectation.

Space is not a word I associated with love for most of my life. I grew up longing for the freedom of stretching further away from the intimacy of my family and small Saskatchewan town. I sat in the farmhouse window sill in my bedroom, staring up at the expansive, prairie sky of stars, full of wonder at all the space in the universe for all of us.

There is not a lot to commend living in a quarantined world.

I had promised myself that I wouldn’t write a COVID-19 column.

Often, we do not see the softer side of people’s nature as they put up a facade of toughness and independence. This is especially true on the streets where the law of the street is, “Don’t show weakness, don’t show compassion.”

One could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as governments across Canada announced the lifting of some restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

May 8 marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, V-E Day.

We need not sit sipping Lysol lemonade and Clorox cocktails in the left field bleachers with Donald Trump to insist that recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is too important to be left exclusively to politicians and health care technocrats.

It’s a pandemic within a pandemic — and a damning indictment of how we’ve been failing to care for our most vulnerable. People living in seniors’ homes across Canada are being hit disproportionately hard by COVID-19.

Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a stalwart of the pro-life movement, touched many lives in different spheres, especially in education, the particular charism of the Basilian Fathers. I will remember him as a fellow priest journalist.