The past few days have been a whirlwind for Dauphin-native Tymothy Jaddock.
“If you would have asked me a week ago, “when’s the next time you’ll be back in Canada?”, I would have said, maybe Christmas time. Four days later, here I am sitting in Calgary.”
Tymothy Jaddock grew up here in the Parkland, but has been attending a prestigious arts school in New York City to obtain his Master’s in dance education and ballet pedagogy.
On March 9th, Tymothy received a memo that his school would be closing for the remainder of the semester. One week later, New York City was virtually on a complete lockdown, with no one allowed to go outside or leave their house without good reason.
It was clear that Tymothy would have to leave New York City.
“When Justin Trudeau addressed all Canadians and said “if you’re abroad it’s time to come home”, things weren’t so bad in New York yet. I was thinking self-isolating in Canada versus self-isolating in NYC…..what’s really the difference? But then the amount of cases continued to increase and increase.”
At this time, New York City is dealing with over 15,000 cases of COVID-19; more per capita than any other state in America, or country on the globe.
Tymothy says the Consulate General of Canada in New York City emailed all students at NYU and encouraged them to go home, saying if Canadians were to get sick there would be limited resources to help them.
“If the Canadian government is reaching out to Canadians at my university, I think that’s a sign that it’s a good time to go home.”
Tymothy was able to find an Air Canada flight out on the morning of Sunday, March 22nd.
“I flew from New York to Montreal. There were only 7 people on our flight; the last of the Canadians trying to get out of New York City. The [New York] airport was like a ghost town. On the board that shows all the flights coming in and out; every flight was cancelled.”
Tymothy arrived in Canada with no symptoms, but is still required to self isolate for 14 days. He’s currently staying with some friends in Calgary until he goes to stay with his sister in Edmonton.
Like many of us, Tymothy is totally uncertain of when things will get back to normal. He’s currently signed into a lease until October, having paying rent for his New York apartment.
“It was so interesting packing up to leave because of the uncertainty of everything. I have no idea when I’ll be able to go back to New York City. Just kind of taking everything day by day.”
