As a reporter whose career at the Prince George Citizen spanned 31 years, Bernice Trick learned early on how to craft stories that were informative and trustworthy, written in a style that made people want to read them.
Retirement hasn’t taken away her thirst for knowledge and Trick stays tuned to what’s happening in the world - especially now, while the story of the century is being written. She knows future historians will look back at this time and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has touched everyone on the planet.
She’s convinced it’s not all doom and gloom.
“I think this is the darkest hour in modern society,” said Trick. “Even World War 2, it was over there. Everybody in the whole world is in the same boat and that doesn’t happen very often. Society is never going to quite be the same again and I think a lot of good things are going to come out of it.
I’m hoping this will make it easier for people. We’re being kinder to each other.”
Trick knows the vast, sparsely-populated Northern Health region, an area the size of France, has gotten through the two-month pandemic relatively unscathed. That hasn’t been the case in the bigger cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Hamilton, where the virus has hit seniors homes hard, killing dozens of people.
“We’re lucky here, we don’t have anybody in here who has it,” said Trick, standing in front of her ground-floor condominium where she lives at RiverBend Manor seniors residence. “In fact, Northern Health is pretty lucky and I think it’s got to do partly with our location. I’d say we’ve done really well in Canada compared to other nations and I’m proud of our people, not only our people in government but our doctors, nurses, first responders, bus and truck drivers. We can be really proud of them and thankful for them.”
RiverBend Manor is an independent-living facility built by BC Housing for people aged 55 and older. Despite the pandemic, which has put some seniors homes in the city on lockdown, RiverBend residents are permitted to leave the building on their own. Non-essential visitors are not allowed and that prohibited list includes hairstylists/barbers and personal cleaning service staff.
“The powers-that-be should be very careful when they ease restrictions because we just can’t go through another wave of this, it would just ruin the economy, and we’d have another round of deaths,” said Trick. “I just hope they’re careful.”
RiverBend residents see each other in hallways but must respect social distancing, can’t gather in common areas and the dining room is closed. Residents who rely on meal programs have food delivered to their apartments. Line-dancing, tai chi, yoga and other exercise classes have been cancelled and the pandemic has temporarily shelved morning and afternoon tea times, movie nights, bingo and all outdoor excursions. Many of the residents get their daily exercise walking on the sidewalk that wraps around the building. Outdoor bingo is in the works at RiverBend and the residence is beginning to offer fitness and stretching classes, but will limit each class to a maximum of five participants. While some restrictions are being lifted in B.C, the no-visitor policy remains in effect at RiverBend.
“Medical people have to come in and (ambulance attendants) come in, but your friends and family, they don’t want them in,” said Trick. “For some people that’s really hard, because they don’t have a lot of things (to do). For somebody like myself, I don’t have any trouble filling the day in at all. I do a lot of reading, a lot of crossword puzzles, I do Sudoku and I’ve got my computer. There’s lots for me to do.”
Trick keeps up with daily events happening in the city on the Citizen’s website and looks forward to reading the weekly Citizen print edition on Thursdays.
“You can get the obituaries there and that’s one of the most important things in the paper,” she laughed.
The former school teacher from Snowden, Sask., got into the newspaper business when she started a weekly publication, The Little Dipper, shortly after moving to Mackenzie with her husband John in 1966. Trick taught school for six years and was hired at the Citizen in 1980, where she covered several beats - city hall, postsecondary education and health – but perhaps she is best remembered for telling the stories of the unsung heroes and their local events as the community beat writer until her retirement in 2011.
Lately, Trick has been putting her writing skills to work producing children’s stories with a holiday theme that she hopes will find their way into school classrooms.
“"I've written a Canada Day story about beavers,”Trick said. “When I was a teacher I could not find suitable stories that I wanted to read in class for certain holidays or celebrations and I thought, one day I’m going to write a story book just for teachers.”
