Vancouver artists are working together during the COVID-19 pandemic to create some beauty through public murals. Much of the city’s busiest areas have turned into ghost towns and storefronts are being boarded up. But the Vancouver Mural Festival (VMF) is commissioning artists to transform those fronts with temporary works of art.

Black Sheep Restaurants has created a playbook detailing every measure they have taken to combat COVID-19 and are offering it free-of-charge online to help fellow restaurateurs and business owners. Basic protocols from hygiene practices to how to communicate with guests are covered, and as well as helpful tips including where to source packaging for delivery and ideas for how to re-structure team schedules.

So you don’t have to go out today but you can invest in a local biz for tomorrow

Parking restrictions are coming to numerous Victoria neighbourhoods as transportation experts try to find space for walkers. Victoria transportation experts say they will expand the program to other neighbourhoods, including Quadra Village, Cook Street Village, Vic West and Fairfield. Those pedestrian heavy areas could see changes in the coming weeks.

Wellandtrulygrey.com is the effort of a small group of like-minded, Victoria-based, volunteer seniors who recognize that many of their fellow isolated seniors are struggling to stay connected with their peers, their families and the community resources they require. For these isolated seniors, wellandtrulygrey.com is their source of vital links to information about COVID-19 and government and community resources generated to help fight the virus and combat its impacts. It is also their interactive bulletin board and sounding board to help them stay connected.

These rooms are meant for people who have not displayed any symptoms of COVID-19, and one person will occupy each room. The rooms will be available to vulnerable people living outside in order to make sure they can meet physical distancing protocols put in place by the provincial health officer. The new locations will be administered by BC Housing and social service providers will be identifying people in the community who would be suitable to move in. Temporary outdoor homeless shelters at Royal Athletic Park and Topaz Park are currently being set up as temporary stopgap measures before authorities are able to find suitable indoor shelter spaces.

In addition to these changes, the City of Victoria will also be sending out city staff to public spaces to engage with residents about playground and recreation facilities to remind them about physical distancing. CRD and City of Victoria parks are remaining open, though physical distancing is still encouraged.

The parks department is working on growing 50,000 to 75,000 seedlings to give to residents in May and June for food security measures. City staff are currently in discussions with farmers and seed libraries to come up with a shortlist of easy-to-grow edible plants that would be ideal for home gardening.

The city has chosen Topaz park and Royal Athletic park as designated sites where harm reduction services, food services and security will be set up. Both have running water so people can wash their hands. The long-term plan is to get homeless people inside but with limited city-owned facilities that can be used, B.C. Housing has had to help find places like vacant motels for homeless people to stay.

The applications that can be submitted online now include rezoning applications, development permits, heritage alteration permits, temporary use permits, variance applications, building plumbing and electrical applications.

The interactive map pinpoints different types of blossoming trees across the city. While provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry is encouraging all residents to stay at home as much as possible, time outdoors is important for mental and physical health. With the weather improving in Victoria, now is a great time to explore some blooming flowers, as long as pedestrians follow physical distancing guidelines and stay at least two metres apart from one another.

To provide support for residents who are suffering in various ways due to COVID, the Province has organized online psychiatry services, call-in clinics to replace walk-in clinics, and addiction day programs that uphold social distancing protocols.

Alberta Health Services’s ext4Hope is a free service providing three months of daily Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help residents cope with the stress and anxiety of isolation.

More than 50 people who used to work in Bruce County’s libraries and museums have been asked if they could work with seniors instead. To date, the former librarians and archivists have just been screening people as they enter the nursing homes, but they’ll soon be trained to take residents to meals, clean bed pans, organize rooms, and eventually, even answer some call bells.

“We’re more than just some reading material,” said Troy Myers, chief librarian of South Shore Public Libraries. “So we want to do what we can to make sure those social connections are maintained.”

Through a partnership with Folding@home, four of the RPL’s servers and five computers from its Digital Media Studio are hard at work crunching data that scientists around the world are using to research COVID-19.

Includes support in how residents can use virtual libraries to hold book clubs, learn things, go digital, etc.

In Toronto, nine TPL branches have been converted into food distribution centers in the past few weeks, in partnership with three local food banks. In Montreal the Grande Bibliothèque, the largest library in Quebec has been transformed into a daytime respite space for homeless people.

It can be tough to teach proper hand washing to kids. So the library put together a thread of kids books as hand soaps.

With public libraries across Canada suddenly shuttered in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, library leaders and workers across the country are quickly adapting to still serve people, primarily online. This article describes some of the initiatives across the country of libraries or library staff.

As part of the agreement, Mississauga library users could borrow up to 10 items in total from the Hamilton and Burlington electronic collections and place five more titles on hold. Mississauga library users would still be permitted to borrow 10 items from their local system, and place 20 titles on hold.

When clients visit a food bank at a TPL branch, library staff will add an age-appropriate book for each child in a family who is interested. TPL’s food banks have been set up in partnership with North York Harvest Food Bank, Daily Bread Food Bank and Second Harvest in nine library branches across the city.

This initiative sees a core group of local citizens, leaders, organizations and government representatives volunteering their time to ignite a community network to build advisory ecosystems for needs associated with health outcomes, food and housing security, business sustainability, and driving future demand for the region’s products and services.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) encourages members to review these resources regularly. The page will be updated with additional information as it becomes available.

CBC’s Art Uncontained is a new initiative connecting Canadian artists and art lovers that includes original programming from CBC Arts and across the CBC network, as well as a new artist fund in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts.

The University is supporting a program by The SEED, a not-for-profit organization at the Guelph Community Health Centre. The SEED is dedicated to ending food insecurity in Guelph and to creating a community without barriers to healthy food. The Program is in direct response to circumstances brought on by the pandemic,

Many of the Greater Toronto Area’s farmers’ markets and specialty food stores remain closed, a number of local farmers and companies are starting to offer home delivery of fresh-from-the-farm local produce, dairy and meat.

Website and social media provides instructions on how to shop safely and outlines how they are keeping staff and products safe and what measures they have taken

These sections of road are a part of the planned East-West Cycling Corridor connection as proposed in the Active Transportation Master Plan. The City is working to implement permanent protected bike lanes on these streets in line with the Brampton 2040 Vision and the Streets for People Term of Council Priority.