“Life lessons from my time in pandemic leadership.” That’s how Dr. Lawrence Loh, recent graduate of Humber College’s eight-month Creative Writing Graduate program, describes the “hybrid memoir” he’s fashioned as part of his return to school at age 43.
If and when his work gets published, it could well be the subtitle. Two years at the centre of the COVID maelstrom, as Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health, and another year heading the 43,000-member College of Family Physicians of Canada in the midst of a national primary care health care crisis took their toll on the man whose steadfast leadership made him either a hero (recipient of the key to the city from former Mayor Bonnie Crombie) or a villain, to a faction of citizens still waging retro-rhetorical war against vaccines and government mandates. “After three years of crisis management, I basically went back to school to learn how to tell stories,” said Loh with the calm, “just the facts m’am” directness that .
And boy does he have stories to tell: about decisions to shut down an Amazon warehouse where infection was spreading, shutting schools in favour of online instruction amid widespread criticism, and dealing with the anti-Asian conspiracy theories that were inevitably directed the way of the son of Malaysian parents of Chinese descent, who grew up in London, Ont. There were “a lot of challenges” to deal with in jumping from the frying pan of the pandemic into the fire of the health care.