Some New Brunswickers are looking forward to having a “more normal, better summer,” something that was teased by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month if COVID-19 cases fall and vaccination rates climb.
Seth Wiggins also spent some time at the beach despite the wind and cool temperatures.
“It is a little chilly, I should have brought my jacket,” he chuckles. “But it’s nice. It’s better than being stuck inside, it’s definitely better than being under lockdown like we were last year.”
Over at Camping Beauséjour, you can feel a bit of a sense of normalcy.
Masks aren’t necessary outdoors in New Brunswick under the yellow alert level, however, informal outdoor gatherings are limited to 50 people with physical distancing.
“You can’t really travel anyways, so we’re kind of trying to do things within the province and support local as much as we can right now,” says Marc-André Godin.
Godin spent some of Monday whittling, a form of wood carving, under the sunny weather.
But he’s thrilled to be at the campground.
“Especially now with COVID and everything else, it’s kind of a getaway place where we can be a little more normal, as they would say, for what normal is now these days,” he says. “But yeah, it’s nice to come back and do the usual stuff that we’ve been doing since we were kids and pass it on to our kids.”
But planning for the upcoming summer season is anything but normal.
The campground is holding off on out-of-province reservations for the time being.
“We are actually not accepting any at this point because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” says Tracy Lavigne, the campground owner. “For us, it’s the uncertainty of staffing, it’s the uncertainty of booking entertainment.”
Reopening plan
Premier Blaine Higgs said Friday the province is expecting to release its reopening plan within the next two weeks.
Speaking to reporters, Higgs was tight-lipped about the exact contents of a reopening plan, but shared several key benchmarks the province is looking at.
One of those is July 1; the date Higgs hopes to see the Atlantic Bubble return.
“We want to see our provinces get back together, we want to see the ability to have an Atlantic Bubble back in action,” Higgs said.
“We wanna see friends and relatives be able to come back to visit and we want to see people that own properties be able to come back to visit,” he said.
It’s unclear at this point when non-essential travellers from outside Atlantic Canada will be allowed into the province, but caseloads and vaccination rates elsewhere will be part of the equation.
“If people are coming here, have they been vaccinated,” Higgs said. “By July, anywhere in the country, most people will have had the opportunity to get one vaccine, many two.”
— With files from Silas Brown
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