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WELL, THIS has been interesting.

When we started this term, we all expected there would be some growing pains and glitches, and perhaps a horrible mistake or two.

In that, we were a bit like the old mountain man with his gun trained on the bear … and a scorpion climbing up the inside of his pant leg.

Hello, COVID-19.

None of us expected to be working from home and communicating via text messages, while a microscopic agent of chaos turned our society inside out – literally.

Inside, the TV news drones on with a carousel of leaders, medical experts and at least one narcissistic madman updating the list of the sick and the dead, while time slips away.

Outside lurks a disease so capricious that it kills and spares without pattern or reason. So a simple trip to the supermarket is like playing Russian roulette with magic bullets.

Whoever coined that line about splendid isolation wasn’t thinking about this viral siege.

With that in mind, and as a parting gift to the students who worked so hard and well to pull off the minor miracle of the last two issues of The City Centre Magpie, we included in this issue a photo feature called “Humans of the Magpie.”

In it, our staffers talk briefly about how they’re coping in confinement, with graduation approaching and facing a normally cool job market that has gone  as cold as a coronavirus.

It’s as close as we could come to a farewell party.

Brian Gorman,
Associate Professor,
MacEwan journalism
gormanb3@macewan.ca