Wood Buffalo councillor from N.L. proud her home province is helping Alberta with COVID-19 fight

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced Thursday that a small team from Newfoundland and Labrador would be heading west to help out in Fort McMurray.

Krista Balsom said she couldn’t help but smile when she heard there were health-care workers heading to help Alberta battle COVID-19 from the military, the Canadian Red Cross — and Newfoundland and Labrador.

“Newfoundland always punches above its weight,” Balsom said in interview Friday. She’s from Random Island, near the central Newfoundland community of Clarenville. Like thousands of others from the East Coast province, she now lives in Fort McMurray, the northern Alberta oilsands town, after her family was lured there for work.

Balsom owns a publishing business and sits as a councillor with the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. In what is perhaps an indicator of just how many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians live in the region, she’s one of three people on council from the province.

“There’s such a strong connection between the people of Newfoundland and the people of Alberta, that goes back a long time,” she said, noting that when fires ravaged Fort McMurray in 2016, people in her home province held concerts, raffles and bake sales to raise funds for their affected family and friends.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced Thursday that a small team from Newfoundland and Labrador would be heading west to help out in Fort McMurray. The fourth wave of COVID-19 threatens to overwhelm Alberta’s hospitals, and the teams from Newfoundland and Labrador, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Red Cross will help expand the province’s intensive care capacity, he said.

READ MORE: COVID-19: Kenney says Alberta to accept help from feds, N.L. as health system under ‘enormous pressure’ 

There were 247 COVID-19 patients in intensive care, Kenney said Thursday, adding that about 83 per cent of the province’s intensive care capacity was in use. Alberta health officials reported 1,706 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, for a total of 20,255 active infections across the province. Twenty more people died, officials said.

By contrast, Newfoundland and Labrador reported 41 new cases on Friday, for a total of 180 active cases — alarming numbers for a province used to near-zero daily case counts, but nowhere near the tallies in Alberta.