Canada’s pandemic confidence rested on one soothing public health officer

Evidence

I understood why the campaign was skeptical: Canadian smugness is a powerful drug. Here in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, the government had delegated almost all of its crucial Covid communications to Dr. Bonnie Henry, a supremely sensible-seeming public health officer who was a kind of anti-Trump. In a soothing voice just above a whisper, she told us daily about the latest data and entreated us, “Be kind, be calm, be safe.” — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 513