Dreading holiday COVID-19 conversations? Help is out there
CBC
It's the time of year when many of us look forward to social outings or family gatherings, but this December, divisions over COVID-19 vaccinations may make planning and conversations around those events more challenging than usual.
Ask almost anyone on the street, and they'll have a story about a pandemic-related holiday conflict.
Chantal Lagasse, for instance, told people invited to her Christmas party they would have to be double-vaccinated and show their Manitoba Health QR code and identification as proof.
Some of her friends didn't attend, though she didn't ask why.
"It's definitely separating the groups," she said, stopping to answer a CBC News question at Winnipeg's The Forks Market about how COVID-19 issues are affecting her social plans.
Another passerby, Rachel Dueck said she tries to avoid arguments about her anti-vaccination stance but doesn't hesitate to give her opinion when asked.
"This is a free country — well, it's supposed to be — and you shouldn't have to be forced into it, to vaccinate," Dueck said.
She said she hasn't seen some people in her life for nearly two years.
"If they don't want to be around me, then I don't go around them," she said. "Pretty much, they isolated me and my kids at home.… I just feel like it's not right."
Such divisions are fuelling conflicts between friends, family members and colleagues that could last long after the pandemic ends, said Tony Friesen, a trainer at Mediation Services in Winnipeg.
COVID-19 is an underlying factor in almost every one of the group's mediation cases these days, from custody disputes between parents to a nurse being threatened at work.
"People have found what they believe, and they've settled into it, and so, this isn't about trying to convince someone to go to a different position," Friesen said.
"This is recognizing there are people out there with different positions that are somewhat incompatible — and not having healthy conversations about this can lead to very toxic conflict."
Established in 1979 as a project of the Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba in response to concerns about victims of crimes and the high number of people being incarcerated in Canada, Mediation Services has now created an online, on-demand training course called COVID Conversations: A Roadmap to Existing Together with Opposing Views.
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WARNING: This story contains details of abuse and intimate partner violence: