a young woman wearing a purple raincoat and green scarf, smiling peacefully at a picnic bench on a rainy day

Wellness is a social justice issue in 2020

The Star | by Laura Elliot, YWCA Board Director

We are wasting a crisis.

While Toronto has been identified as a COVID hot spot, the reality is that low-income neighbourhoods make up the majority of outbreaks. Toronto publishes data on the concentration of infections in the city, and areas such as Glenfield-Jane Heights tend to represent a significant percentage of case numbers on a consistent basis. In Rosedale, outbreaks are not a common occurrence. A curtain has been lifted on the pre-existing inequalities associated with well-being and illness.

Many inhabitants of low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto travel on public transit, commute to a low- or minimum-wage job, and live in a densely populated highrise building with questionable ventilation. On the other hand, residents of Toronto’s more well-to-do neighbourhoods often have the luxury of working from their nicely appointed home offices that overlook the green space in which their children can play and run. Many are able to escape to a second home to bathe in nature and commit to wellness on the weekends. The contrast between these experiences in “quarantine” is stark. (Read more…)