Thread by @snolen

Hey, Twitter friends, I have a story about a story I'd like to tell you.
(This is the story:)
1/ thecoast.ca/halifax/what-h…

53 people died of Covid-19 at a Halifax longterm care facility called Northwood, over the course of 44 frantic days last spring.
(They included Gerald Jackson, Gena Hemsworth and Mamie Francis).
2/

53 deaths, in the context of the carnage in longterm care across Canada over the past year, could be seen as a sort of grim victory, rather than a travesty.
But I live a block from Northwood + I kept looking at the home, through the strange days of lockdown a year ago ... 3/

... trying to imagine what was going on inside as dozens + then hundreds of the residents caught Covid – as the pandemic kept raging inside Northwood even as it was successfully pushed back in the rest of Nova Scotia and the most of us breathed easier ... 4/

Then the provincial government concluded its "review" of events at Northwood + provided exactly zero answers to the public.
So then I started asking questions. Again and again, people kept saying to me, "Well, it was a difficult time, they did the best they could." 5/

And while I in no way want to diminish the enormous dedication of all the regular Northwood staff who kept going to work through the outbreak (such as PSW Glory Mamngong), and all the extra volunteers who stepped up to help out – I kept wondering, Really? 6/

When I mapped out how long Nova Scotia had to get ready (a full 6 weeks after the first case in long-term care in North America until the virus made it to Northwood) I started to question whether we all owed its residents more than just settling for "did the best we could." 7/

I did nearly 50 interviews. I read more than 1,000 pages of documents. I talked to families, bureaucrats, staff members, experts on long-term care.
And I concluded that, at Northwood, Nova Scotia failed its most vulnerable people, catastrophically, and in multiple ways. 8/

I hope you'll make the time to read the piece.
9/
thecoast.ca/halifax/what-h…

If you're not a big fan of the #longread – good news, we also made an interactive timeline, which pretty clearly illustrates that something went gravely wrong.
(grateful here to the mad graphic skills of @johannaechis) 10/
thecoast.ca/halifax/covid-…

I wrote this story for @TwitCoast, Halifax's scrappy alt-weekly. The Coast is a somewhat smaller-circulation media organization than I have written for in recent years; I wanted to publish it here for 2 reasons: first, because it's a story for Halifax, and because ... 11/

... although I've spent most of my professional life in international journalism, I'm a committed (and worried) believer in the power of local news.
@TwitCoast, battered by the pandemic, is coming back stronger as a membership-driven digital-first media organization 12/

The Coast has ambitious plans to help reverse the attrition in journalism east of Montreal over the past couple decades. It will remain, as always, free to read – but @twitcoast is asking those who can afford to, to become members, to help keep it accessible to everyone 13/

This story is an attempt to provide the answers about Northwood that a public inquiry might have.
It's the kind of reporting that, I hope, makes communities better, and it's journalism we all need to pay for. 14/
thecoast.ca/halifax/what-h…

I hope you'll read it, and if you live in Halifax, or don't live here now but love and miss it, I hope you'll consider becoming a @twitcoast member, so that The Coast can do more stories like this.
(the lovely portraits with this piece are by @megsapixel) 15/

Finally I want to express my thanks and my sympathy, to the families who lost people they loved in Northwood. Every day at the Covid briefing last spring we heard a new death toll, a statistic. They heard that their mothers, sisters, sons, were gone. /ends
thecoast.ca/halifax/rememb…