I had a few moments to reflect on my post from last year. That post marked the 1 year into this term of office after being elected to my second term as Regional Councillor in Milton.
I remarked that 2019 was pretty stressful with everything that was going on. From Regional review by the province to the possible impacts of Bill 108 and more. Budgets were tight and we had some hard decisions to be made in the 2019/2020 budget.
However I looked towards 2020 with some optimism and hope that things would “get better” Not even 3 months into 2020 our community, our province, our country and the world was enveloped in a pandemic. For those first few days, weeks and even months we had no idea what was going to happen. Everything was new. Daily press conferences by the Prime Minister and Premier of Ontario became a ritual…a must watch to get as much information to the public as possible. Then began the “what ifs” of the pandemic. What if this wasn’t going away? What can we do to beat this? Should we wear masks? Should we stay home?
The information came at us constantly and consistently each and every day. Some days it would look good and the other days the changes to the way we would be living our lives became almost palatable. Then something happened.
Our community really came together to meet the challenges. Groups like #miltonstrong – Support for your local businesses and Community and others came into existence. Each and every day pots and pans were clanging with Let’s Make Some Noise Milton! and our community grew stronger.
Now as we approach the end of the year, the challenges still exist and in some cases have become worse. The active case counts continue to rise, our long term care homes where our loved ones are now deep into this pandemic and we are losing our friends and family members to this virus.
Looking forward to the coming year we have some things to look forward to. The vaccine is almost ready and through the first part of the new year is expected to be delivered. I’m not going to get into the politics of the moment about the how and when…we can hope it will be sooner rather than later.
Again, looking back on my words of last year and how optimistic I felt about the year 2020…some might say I should be cautious about 2021.
Thing is I DO feel optimistic about 2021 and beyond. I’m confident that as we turn the corner on 2020, there is some hope on the horizon. Yes the numbers continue to rise and as a community we need to deal with that. We need to get back to the basics and see if we can stem the tide and concentrate on helping those in long term care homes get through this.
We need to keep focus on our friends and family to make sure they continue to be safe through all of this as well. And when I say friends and family I also mean our community as a whole.
Our business community needs your help. We can do our part by shopping local this holiday season. Finding a local small business who has what we need and get it from them. We need to support our restaurants by ordering take out, and if they have it available, gift cards to give our friends as presents. Encourage that local focus because it will not only help our local business owners but our community as a whole.
I know that over the next 28 days as we check off our calendars and count down to end 2020, we’ll be doing a lot of reflection. I don’t want to look back however, I want to look forward. As one of my favourite sayings goes “Whats Next!”
I still feel optimism that 2021 will be a good year. We are going to face our challenges head on and be a better community, province and country afterwards.
If you feel the same way, post some comments below and share this with your friends. Let the bells ring not just for the holiday season that is approaching us, but for the fact we as a town, community and family will make the next year of 2021 great. Let’s keep looking forward, be positive, be careful and keep the discussion going about how we’re going to make 2021 a year to remember.
