Opinion: Community starting to rise up

By Mike Williscraft
NewsNow

Wow!

I don’t know about you guys but I feel like I just went 15 rounds with Mike Tyson (in his prime).

The community – residents and businesses – have sustained many body blows and a few connecting headshots since we last chatted.

First, we need to deal with the obvious….you boneheads who are coming home from Florida and marching right into one of our local grocery stores…give your heads a collective shake.

If you don’t have a close friend or a relative who can help, call me – cell, 289-442-4244 or office, 289-235-9500.

I have had many people call and offer their help to get groceries or medical needs to shut-ins or people who simply require support due to their 14-day self-quarantine.

As the prime minister said, “Go home. Stay home.”

Nothing personal, and it has been said all over the place many times, you could be a carrier and not show a single symptom. You have no way to know, so you could think this entire thing 100 per cent silly. You feel fit as a fiddle. Great for you!

However, you could quite literally kill someone and never know – no exaggeration.

Same for people who want to get out for a walk. Yes, this is still permissible, but scenes like Beamers with 500-600 people in one area just should not happen. Sure it is outdoors, but there are also railings on the hawk watch tower, benches, picnic tables where others would come into contact over the span of a day.

One thing history has shown, you can knock this community down, but we’re sure as heck getting back up again. How many times have we dragged ourselves off the mat to get behind West Lincoln Memorial Hospital?

The difference in this case is, we’re getting slugged in the head by a faceless, bodiless foe.

We may still be a touch punch drunk, but the signs are starting to pop up we are getting up.

I have received several calls from residents offering to help anyone – anyone being someone facing a 14-day self-quarantine, shut-ins who need groceries or items from a pharmacy or household items or someone who does not have a contact in town who can help.

If you want to help, call me and I will add your name to the list.

Also, a group of local residents has banded together to create a one-stop shop for helping Grimsby residents connect for delivery from local restaurants. The no-touch delivery service is called To Your Door.

You will find a story and an ad elsewhere in this edition with more details, so I don’t want to duplicate, but that whole thing came together in a matter of days. Great work by dedicated people just trying to help some local eateries survive, at this point, and it has a platform which could allow it grow into other products and also flex into other communities.

All done by volunteers at no fee to the customer but tips and donations will be directly back to each business from which an order originates.

Changing hats to Grimsby Downtown Improvement Area Board, we hosted a webinar last Friday which featured marketing tips which can position any position to survive and put it in a stronger position when this whole mess subsides – and it will.

I will be posting a link for the video on DIA’s Friendly By Nature Facebook page, so all can take it in as they please.

The DIA is also looking into developing another sales tool which could keep the wheels of commerce going even for businesses which have had their doors closed by Premier Doug Ford’s edict of essential businesses only.

It is awfully hard to get these new pillars of support in place while trying to keep my own head above water but if the business community does not survive, I don’t either. We are that closely tied.

So this message is about “get it together people” and abide by the government guidelines AND if you want to help, there are ways materializing to allow you to do that.

Let’s get through this two weeks of immediate pain and see how we collectively do.