Normally when you walk down the toilet paper aisle at the local grocery store, you just need toilet paper.
But on Friday, Helen Maddox of Petrolia was standing in front of the empty shelves at Heidi’s Independent Grocer contemplating the history in the making which led to buying frenzy.
For a while, she talked to some young people. “I told them to take this in, it may never happen again.”
For Maddox and many of her generation, the idea of empty grocery shelves isn’t knew. She grew up with stories of the depression as a regular staple of conversation. And, living on the farm in Brooke Township as a child, it wasn’t all that unusual to run out of bread before the bread delivery man arrived at the door. But they would cope just fine.
“We’d make baking soda biscuits,” she told The Independent as she leaned on her grocery cart.
“I’ve worked in high schools, so I talk to all teenagers,” she says adding “they’re very lucky they didn’t grow up hearing about the depression, about…making underwear from flour bags. That becomes a part of you, it becomes a part of your story.”
Maddox has been watching the advance of the novel coronavirus. In January, as it ravaged China, she was talking to Heidi Souddant – the owner of the grocery store – and eerily predicted the empty shelves.
“Back in January…I told her if the virus comes here, will you be getting more Purell (hand sanitizer), because people will panic. I never thought of toilet paper,” she laughed.
The run on toilet paper across North America has stumped many people. The virus is similar to a cold or flu with respiratory problems – really not a cause to stock up on the white stuff.
But Maddox isn’t really surprised at the mad rush to the store.
“I totally understand it. Normally, we don’t have to think of our own survival…when we do get to this we have to think about survival.
“We live in the land of plenty, but this is a bit of a wake up call for people. Me included.”
Maddox says people become “very aware” that Canadians are “very vulnerable.
“We’re still way better off than a lot of places,” she says. But Maddox says what is happening today will be a good point of discussion down the road.
“When this (pandemic) is over, maybe people will have a discussion of why not having food security in a country that grows food is a bad idea … and that 90 per cent of our medicine comes from China.”
Until then, Maddox is counting on people working together to get through the measures in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. “There is no point in fear,” she says. “Maybe people will work as a community more.”