Police Chaplains Today

With all that is happening in the world today it is often difficult to see anything good. The narrative is often controlled by the media and even social media. I work in both of the North American hotspots: policing and long term care. Not too many positive things being said about either and yet many people that I know personally, are doing a wonderful job showing what the normal is. Good people dealing with the worst situations and often without the support of others. There are many Blacks who are justified in their anger but I will not accept the way some are expressing that anger. There are many family members who are angry about long term care and how their loved ones are being treated. The system is broken in some places but not in all and yet many of the staff are feeling the brunt of the accusations. Many are so tired they can barely stand and cops are putting their lives at risk and all they get is grief. In later life I have learned to break things down to the lowest commo...

I have to try really hard to keep my feelings to myself in regards to some of the posts made by my contacts on social media. So instead of losing some friends, I felt it best to give each of them an opportunity to see the light through some truth rather than conjecture. I am a chaplain in two long term care homes here in Ontario. In case you have not been following the news, LTC has been hit very hard with the COVID-19 pandemic. As I write this blog, there are well over 200 homes with outbreaks related to this coronavirus. There are hundreds of deaths in this province alone because as we have learned, the elderly are a prime target of the disease. Now for some clarity of how these seniors contracted the virus. To put it simply, it came from outside the LTC homes, either by family members, staff or contractors. The other possibility is from residents who had been on an outing with family members or in a hospital. No resident just picked up the virus sitting in their room with no out...