As we stare down a third and final wave of COVID-19 before vaccines become widely available, it’s worth asking what more our government can do to protect its citizens from both the spread of COVID-19 and its devastating economic impacts.

One of the most consistent policy demands during the COVID-19 pandemic has been paid sick leave, which became especially important because of the rising prevalence of workplace outbreaks during the third wave. Now, workplace outbreaks have accounted for more cases than long-term care homes. Particularly at places like factories, warehouses, and grocery stores, where workers stay indoors and work in close quarters, outbreaks were and are a serious risk. If employees must choose between paying rent and staying home, many will understandably choose the former option, guaranteeing yet another outbreak. Not only do all workers inherently deserve the right to keep their livelihood if they get sick, everyone benefits when workers are able to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by staying home after the onset of symptoms.

Roughly 58% of Canadians don’t get paid sick leave through their employer, including 70% of low-income Canadians, so businesses clearly weren’t providing paid sick leave on their own. This made it the government’s job to ensure that everyone can access paid sick leave, but they waited far too long. Under Doug Ford, the provincial government offered nothing to workers who got sick on the job for months, claiming that the small Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB), which provides $450 per week to those who are unable to work due to COVID-19, would be enough. But the CRSB is not an adequate substitute for paid sick leave. It applies only after a worker exhibits symptoms serious enough that they are forced to stop working, which allows plenty of time for COVID to spread while the worker’s symptoms are milder. Additionally, workers must reapply each week they are sick and wait for days before the money arrives; keep in mind that low-income workers living paycheck to paycheck might not have that time. Finally, the CRSB does not make up for lost income, as the amount of aid given is less than the weekly pay of a minimum-wage earner in Ontario. Under Ford’s system, staying home due to COVID-19 symptoms always meant taking a pay cut.

After voting against paid sick leave over 20 times, Ford finally offered three guaranteed paid sick days, which would expire on September 25. While this represents progress, it’s not enough. The Liberals have advocated for ten paid sick days while the NDP support fourteen. This would ensure workers have enough paid sick days to actually recover from COVID, and the paid sick leave program would be permanent rather than temporary. Additionally, while the program will be paid for by employers, the government will reimburse them for up to $200 a day in wages. In practice, this means that large corporations like Amazon or Loblaws will not have to pay for paid sick leave even though they are more than capable of doing so. Instead, the taxpayers must pay to ensure these corporations can keep their profits.

This is just one obvious example of the government failing to step in and protect workers. After lifting a temporary moratorium on evictions (during which landlords could still submit eviction applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board), Doug Ford instead urged landlords and tenants to “work things out.” Shockingly, this didn’t happen as thousands of tenants faced hearings and evictions. Even though it would be trivially easy for the government to pass a motion banning evictions for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, they simply refused to do so despite the risks it posed to public health; an analysis of 43 states in the United States that lifted eviction bans concluded that the subsequent wave of evictions caused more than 10,000 excess deaths. He has since reinstated the temporary moratorium after issuing a stay-at-home order, but voted against extending it for the full year, meaning many tenants will be evicted as soon as the order is lifted, well before the pandemic’s danger has passed.

What is the explanation for our government’s unwillingness to enact these policies? As discussed earlier, mandating paid sick leave and banning evictions make sense both from the standpoint of protecting public health and basic human decency. The costs and barriers to implementation are minimal. So what’s the problem?

The only explanation is that the government simply does not believe they need to solve these problems. Instead, they are acting according to the standards of neoliberalism, an economic system that promotes capitalist free markets as the solution to most, if not all, of the world’s major problems. Under neoliberalism, the role of the state is not to ensure a basic standard of living or to protect and expand democracy in our workplaces and governments. In short, the role of the state is not to help people who need it. Instead, as activist George Monbiot writes, the state must preserve and promote free markets where private firms and individuals can compete against each other with minimal interference by adopting the following program:

Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

Therefore, the only aid given to individuals should be done with the purpose of allowing them to participate in the market rather than guaranteeing basic needs - though according to the most hardcore neoliberals, even this could be considered a “market distortion.” After that, the only thing left to do is let the market sort itself out - and if the market does not guarantee paid sick leave or even something as fundamental as a roof over one’s head, that’s simply the system working as designed.

Who knew that in the year 1218, a meeting that should have gone simply between a few traders and a governor on the outskirts of the Khwarizm Empire in Central Asia would lead to numerous desolate cities filled with millions of dried-out corpses just a few years later? Genghis Khan, content with simply having access to trade with the Middle East, sent a group of 450 merchants to the city of Otrar, where a man named Inalchuq was appointed governor. Suspecting the merchants as spies, Inalchuq ordered that they be killed. Genghis Khan then sent another round of envoys, this time to the emperor himself, demanding that he punish Inalchuq. Instead, the emperor mutilated the faces of the envoys and sent the heads back to Mongolia. This left the Great Khan in such a state of shock that he went to the sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun and said “I was not the author of this trouble; grant me strength to exact vengeance.” The legendary wrath of the Khan was to be unleashed in all of its frightening glory. Within three months, Genghis Khan arrived at the gates of Otrar with 150,000 horsemen and the finest corps of Chinese doctors and engineers. It would serve as a preview of the devastation to come. The entire city was burnt to the ground, including its library which rivalled the ancient Library of Alexandria. Inalchuq’s fate was unknown, but one story mentions molten silver being poured down his throat. Every citizen seen outside was instantly cut down, and the remaining were enslaved, either to be sent to Mongolia or to carry supplies across the vast swaths of territory that the Mongols fought in. The remainder of Central Asia shared in the same fate; horsemen swept across its relatively flat plains, wreaking devastation and slaughter on every major city without fail. To aid in this, irrigation systems were destroyed as well, a decision that would have as far-reaching consequences on the land's prosperity as up to the 15 million people who were estimated to have died between 1219-1222 during the conquest. However, it would be a lie to paint Mongol rule of Central Asia as purely one of slaughter and ruin; indeed, nuance is often the first casualty when it comes to interpreting history. The Mongols ushered in a renewed age of religious tolerance and temporarily revived the relevance of the Silk Road, creating a massive free trade zone only to be surpassed in the modern-day. No doubt can be left though, that Central Asia still bears the scars of what happened eight-hundred years ago.

One of the stratagems that Genghis Khan gave to his horsemen at the beginning of the invasion in 1219 was to make no distinction between the irrigation systems and people; both were to be attacked ferociously on sight. The purpose was to transform the Central Asian landscape into something more akin to the flat, unobstructed Mongolian steppes. Irrigation systems formed canals that delayed marching time, inhibited the movement of horsemen, and gave water to cities that the Mongols were trying to take. The overwhelming Mongolian army swatted away armies like flies, but the canals presented more problems to them than men ever did. It would prove impossible to rebuild even half of the irrigation systems due to the vast scale of the damage and because skilled workers in the region were transferred to China. Dams that were the products of generations were levelled to the ground. The impact of this was to place a sharp limit on the number of people who could inhabit Central Asia due to the drastic drop in the food supply. Many historians note that this destroyed Central Asia’s urban culture, which had been a critical factor in its intellectual vitality and high literacy rates.

Historians also estimate that anywhere between 10-90% of the Central Asian population died, with the effect of “what the Black Death wrought on Europe.” Going through a tally of the before and after populations of cities is shocking; the Khwarezmid Empire’s foremost city, Merv, lost 700,000 people as it rebelled against Mongol rule. In Nishapur, the Islamic world's intellectual centre, skulls were piled up in 2 columns, one for each gender. In Gurganj, the slaughter was so extensive that one philosopher noted it to be the “abode of the jackal and the haunt of the owl and kite.” The ruling aristocracy was especially singled out for death as the Mongols had learned in their conquests that aristocrats were usually the ones to incite rebellion when armies withdrew, causing political chaos. Over the four years of subjugation, some have calculated that one Mongol soldier died for every hundred civilians. This caused a massive decrease in the tax base and chased out many of the intellectuals who had contributed to Central Asia's cultural dynamism, like Rumi. Ofttimes these intellectuals had fled to modern-day India and contributed to the rise of the prosperous Muslim kingdoms located there, like the Delhi Sultanate.

The Mongols did however manage to revive the ancient institution of the Silk Road. Up till the conquest of the Khan, it had been on the decline since the early 10th century. Additionally, the lack of political unity across the Road led to the trade route constantly being raided and a subsequent decrease in activity. But the highway’s notable reputation was not lost on the Mongols. Under Genghis Khan's orders, roads were built along the route, a symbol of the priority that the Mongols placed on renewing its relevance as the Mongols were not known for infrastructural prowess. Another way the Mongols tried to reverse the route's decline was to only rebuild cities that were located on it. By not repairing cities in the vicinity, the Mongols would funnel all the trade that would otherwise occur along other routes onto the Silk Road. As a result, gunpowder, paper, silkworm breeding, and silk spinning were introduced to the Middle East and Europe from China, accelerating these regions' technological development. Since the Silk Road also encompassed the lands of numerous different religions, an era of (relative) religious tolerance came into being, all in the name of facilitating business. For example in the year 1253, on the Christian holiday of Quinquagesima, a different member of the Mongol aristocracy would visit the church of the Nestorian community in Karakorum and “gave food to the priests and the other Christians...and gave me and my companion each a tunic and trousers of grey samite, lined with silk wadding…” However, the Silk Road's temporary prosperity would unfortunately fade again a short while after the death of Genghis Khan, making his efforts to restore the Road’s glory in vain.

Without the Mongol conquest, it is likely that technologies such as printing and gunpowder would not have been discovered by the rest of the world until hundreds of years later, setting back the rate of collective human progress. However, the detrimental impact the Mongols had on Central Asia cannot be ignored. The numerous intellectuals who fled the land because of the Mongols would be the arguable death blow to the region’s attempts to regain prosperity, along with the razing of some of the largest cities in the world. The flight of intellectuals meant that Central Asia would never again have the leadership to see it back to power. The irrigation systems, cunningly destroyed by the Mongols, prevented the population from recovering the millions lost due to the Khan's temper. Thus, the impact of the Mongolian invasion had an overwhelmingly negative effect on Central Asia, simultaneously robbing it of its economy, money, trade, people, and agriculture, while not offering any replacement in turn. It is a testament to Genghis Khan and the Mongols that what had happened in Central Asia would only end up as an insignificant sign of what the rest of the world was about to face.

The occasion has slipped from my mind, but I’ll never forget the discomfort of suppressing my tears that day. A dizzying mix of sorrow and frustration surged in my chest, reddening my cheeks. A stinging in my eyes, sour and persistent, followed every blink. Voices in my head whispered phrases such as “I don’t like this,” “I’m being wronged,” “I want to leave.” But I pushed them aside and donned an empty smile. Despite my wavering voice and trembling lips, I hoped my large glasses would cover up my features and hide my dejection.

We all have days where we hide our emotions. Can you count how many times someone you know has uttered, “I’m fine,” despite their tone and facial expression screaming otherwise? While the occasional suppression of our feelings, depending on the circumstances, is appropriate or even necessary, it shouldn’t be a patterned default response. Brushing aside the heart is damaging to both our health and our ability to communicate meaningfully.

Why do we mask our emotions?

There are many reasons behind concealing our emotions, depending on the complex social situation we’re in. However, the core motivating factor is often the same: fear.

1) Fear of showing weakness

When we expose our feelings, we often fear that others will also perceive us as fragile and oversensitive. Have you grown up hearing others tell you to “smile and be brave”? Society has conditioned us to view open displays of emotions as childish and pathetic, when ironically, it takes an incredible amount of courage to be vulnerable with others. This is especially true for men, who have been shackled by toxic narratives such as “boys don’t cry” since childhood; society has told them that displaying emotions undermines their masculinity, even though it’s something natural and human.

2) Fear of others responding negatively

When a friend bothers you, how often do you voice your annoyance? We fear that expressing our discomfort will alienate others, who may not respond positively. Instead of confronting a situation assertively, we opt to retreat from conflict just in case our actions backfire. This stems from distrust in both ourselves and others to handle issues productively. Emotional baggage from past relationships may exacerbate this belief.

3) Fear of not mattering

When we lack self-esteem, we question whether we matter as people, and by extension, the legitimacy of our feelings. Is our sadness or happiness that important? Are they even worth displaying? Any belittling we’ve faced in the past for expressing ourselves, especially from our parents and caregivers, may cause us to second guess ourselves. Afraid we would only be criticized or dismissed rather than validated, we preemptively shut ourselves down.

Why is masking our emotions harmful?

According to a study from the University of Texas, when we bottle away our feelings, we actually strengthen them. Eventually, the frustration we keep under our masks may reach a tipping point, triggering aggression. How many times have you lashed out at someone when you least meant to? Other unhealthy ways of coping with our feelings may include binge-eating or excessive work, taking a toll on our physical health as well. Stress, anxiety, and depression also translate to a variety of physical symptoms from muscle tension to nausea. Moreover, hiding our emotions damages the very relationships we strive to protect. Insisting we’re fine when we obviously aren’t not only confuses and frustrates the other party, but clearly displays our lack of trust towards them. Honest communication is the foundation of a meaningful relationship. When we withhold a part of ourselves, we fail to connect with those we care about.

What should we do to stop?

Work up the courage to share your feelings honestly. Be patient. The listening party may not understand you at first, or may even say something insensitive without knowing. But communication is a two-way street; when others are trying in good faith to understand your feelings, your job should be to assist them. When addressing someone who’s part of the problem, try using “I” statements to convey your thoughts without sounding accusatory. For example, the tone in “I feel frustrated when I get interrupted” is completely different from “You keep interrupting me and that’s annoying.” By establishing your boundaries, others will be made aware of how their actions impact you and will be more likely to change.

If you didn’t get the chance to express your feelings, you should let them out sometime later in a healthy way. Strategies include talking to someone you trust, such as family or friends. Other methods include writing in a journal, listening to music, meditating, or any activity that can bring emotional catharsis. If masking your emotions has become a long-term problem, please reach out for help. Talking to a therapist or Marleen, our school’s social worker, will give you a safe space to identify your personal reasons behind emotional suppression and how to fix it.

Expressing your feelings, especially when they’re negative, may feel uncomfortable. But they’re a part of who you are, and they deserve to be respected. So please live freely. Allow yourself to unapologetically laugh or cry. Life is a dance, but certainly not a masquerade.

As the software Adobe Flash Player drew to an end, so followed the slowly fading glory that was once held by Poptropica. At its peak, the old flash game had over 500 million users in 200 different countries and territories. Often compared to other Adobe Flash giants such as Club Penguin and Animal Jam, Poptropica ruled the world for many young children and adolescents alike. So what exactly happened? How did such a successful game fall from grace?

Replacement of Company

In 2015, Pearson, which was the company that owned Poptropica, sold the game to the venture capitalist Sandbox Networks. Sandbox Networks was problematic because of two things: they were well know for valuing money over the audience's experience, and they owned Hopter, a TV learning app for children ages 2-6. They also replaced the bulk of the old writing and creative team, a decision which they would soon come to regret over the next following years.

Terrible Updates and the Beginning of a Series of Bad Decisions

The replacement of the old team had brought along with it a series of abhorrent updates. The charming old map was replaced by a slight commercialized rollout map, which was built in the SUI format and was often glitchy. Rather than arranging islands on the map chronologically, they were illogically grouped into categories--one group was even labelled “adventure islands” which made no sense as all of the islands were supposed to be adventure-related. Furthermore, the beloved homepage and in-island maps were also removed for reasons unknown.

All seven of the fandom-based islands (Great Pumpkin Island, the Wimpy Kid Islands, etc) were made members only. This sparked rage amongst many players, especially because so many islands had suddenly become off-limits without warning.

As awful as these updates were, players begrudgingly accepted them and went on to enjoy the arrival of the new island (Escape from Pelican Rock Island). Unbeknownst to the players, this would be the last new island they would ever play on the website for the next five years.

Poptropica Worlds

In 2016, the focus of the developers shifted from Poptropica to Poptropica Worlds, which was meant to be a more user-friendly platform with 3D animated characters. The new website was a colossal failure with most players disappointed with the new developments.

The game itself was extremely powerful and as a result, took much longer to run, causing terrible lag. This was because it was written on Unity (a cross-platform game engine), instead of Adobe Flash which the old game was written on. Issues with lagging on Unity are common if the game developers are not careful enough with optimization and can render games extremely slow, especially on lower-end devices.

Additionally, new redesigns of the characters and landscapes were clunky and foreign, achieving the opposite of its intended effect, driving away many players that had stuck with Poptropica since the original website. The odd animations combined with the glazed, blank stare, gave the characters an uncanny doll-like resemblance. Familiar stick-like arms and legs were remodelled to look more realistic, with the hands even featuring fingers (heavens forbid!) and feet, socks.

The game also promised returning users a transfer of their inventory items and clothing from Poptropica to Worlds, but this never ended up happening.

Island gameplay, which is the biggest selling point of Poptropica, completely flopped. Most of the islands in Poptropica Worlds were poorly written with extraordinarily simple puzzles seemingly aimed towards young children (4-7 years of age). Regular players (9-12) were no longer challenged and had no incentive to play, and hardcore fans (13-25) were no longer able to enjoy the thrill of solving an island which used to take hours at a time.

The greatest issue, however, was simply the lack of things to do. The old Poptropica had an online chatting function, minigames and rankings, an interactive homepage, a personal profile, the friends feature, dozens of follower pets, well-developed lore, events, easily recognizable NPCs, and over forty playable islands. Poptropica Worlds had none of that. What it did have were three islands and a treehouse which only members could fully decorate. Out of the three playable islands, one of them was a “remastered” (aka clunkier and simplified) version of the original Poptropica’s 24 Carrot Island and another was only available to paying members, so players really only had one new island to play.

All of these factors combined left Worlds with only a handful of regular players, and the site was eventually discontinued.

Return to Poptropica

With Poptropica Worlds shut down, all eyes turned back to the original Poptropica. Players were hopeful that the development of islands on the original website would resume and the game would be restored to its former glory. Unfortunately, they were met with radio silence from the creators, only receiving minor updates such as snow appearing on Home Island in the winter, which continued throughout the summer until September of the following year. The developers, instead of adding new features and islands, were focused on converting each of the forty-seven islands from Flash to HTML5. Because of the lack of activity, players forgot about the game entirely. Even worse, original and beloved islands began to disappear one by one until there were only eight islands left.

2019: The Silent Era

Poptropica has two sources of primary income: membership and advertisements. Membership in online games is always a tricky balance to hit. On one hand, developers need enough extra features to incentivize people to actually purchase membership. On the other hand, they need to be careful to not make the game membership-based as new players would never be hooked into the game and stay long enough to want to buy membership (one of the reasons Club Penguin died). In its early stages, Poptropica hit this balance beautifully. Islands were available to all users, and so was customizable clothing. Member benefits included minor additional features like accessing bonus quests and members-only clothing, which were nice to have, but not essential to the core of the game. After Poptropica stopped making islands, there was no longer an incentive to purchase membership—with no new islands, there were no new bonus quests for members to play. Many members-only clothing items as well were released to the general public.

Strangely enough, the ads had also disappeared from the game. Normally, ads were scattered throughout the game on billboards and along the sides of the gameplay window. At the start of 2019, the billboards were empty and the sides of the gameplay windows only advertised the equally desolate Poptropica App. Around this time players had begun to drop like flies. Previously bustling common rooms such as Party Time Tower in Time Tangled Island were devoid of even a single user.

2020: A Smaller Round of Awful Updates

Just like 2019, 2020 had a minimal number of users on the site. Around the beginning of the year, the developers attempted to revitalize the game and prepare it for the end of Flash. They first got rid of Poptropica Realms, which was a very popular sandbox feature allowing users to build and destroy structures at will. They then updated the login screen to a more saturated child-friendly design.

The common room on home island was replaced with the arcade and Poptropica was somehow made even less interactive between users, with the option to directly challenge another user to a minigame disabled. Many of the minigames were also removed, leaving only three behind.

All of the updates added nothing to the game and instead retracted from it, which is why they failed to draw in more players.

What’s Left: 2021

As of today, we’re left with a handful of islands, an arcade, and not much else. Since the transfer to HTML5, old features, too many to be mentioned in this article, have long since gone. The public eye has turned to newer games and Poptropica no longer holds the spotlight as it once proudly did.

The developers are trying to pick up the pieces of the old game and turn it into something newer and better. Just this March, they have announced that a new island, Fairy Tale Island, is currently in the works. When released, this will be the first island to be developed in over six years.

For now, we can only reminisce of Poptropica’s glory days and hope that over the next few years, the game can be restored to its former golden age.

Signing off,

Prickly Boa