A group of students from the River East Transcona School Division Choir have released a music video dedicated to lifting the spirits of Manitoba health care workers.
“The project started when we had our first choir meeting of the year,” said Janet Isaac-Martens, music teacher at Kildonan East.
“Our students and I had ideas for how we could perform when we couldn’t perform in front of an audience.”
Around 65 students from Kildonan East Collegiate, River East Collegiate and Murdoch MacKay Collegiate spent months working on the collaborative virtual video.
“A boost for them is kind of needed,” said Aiden Ordonez, a year 12 pupil from Kildonan East. “To just reach out on our side and let them know they are appreciated. We wanted to kind of acknowledge the blood, sweat and tears they shed. »
Read more:
Winnipeg’s RF Morrison School supports Ukrainian students and staff
As of Friday night, the video had received more than 6,500 views on YouTube after being online for just a week.
“It was nice to see that it was really so touching and it really had that effect and it was spiraling us, and it feels good to have them brought up,” said Kildonan East pupil Jace Trosky in 12th grade.
The video had a profound impact on many healthcare workers, after a grueling and tragic year.
Dr. Pierre Plourde, Medical Officer of Health for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, has experienced this professionally and personally.
“In addition to everything else, my father passed away in December and I am the executor of his estate. And then my mother-in-law died. So (my wife) and I had to go through that, so we support each other, it was also December,” he said.
“And now my mum has moved into a nursing home and been placed in mostly palliative comfort care, so I expect my mum won’t last very long.”
Plourde says the pandemic has made things worse.
Read more:
Winnipeg daycare center left without transportation after gas siphoning incident
“All the isolation my parents have had to go through over the past few months has taken them from completely independent living, doing relatively well, to living on support, in a nursing home, and then my father, in both weeks following his admission to a nursing home. home, until his death,” he said.
“His spirits just gave up. So things were difficult.
Plourde said he wasn’t originally going to click the link to watch the video, but something compelled him to.
“Before I even watched it, to be honest, my first reaction was to delete the email. Too busy, too tired, overwhelmed, too exhausted,” he said.
“I listened to the lyrics and I listened to the music and I was quite surprised and shocked by my reaction. I’m not one to cry – I kind of hold my emotions inside, maybe. being that it’s part of being a doctor my whole life and dealing with a lot of tragedies including death and i just started crying and i realized wow there are still emotions inside of me, and I know it, I’m still grieving. It had to come out.
Plourde says the video was released internally at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and likely touched the hearts of many healthcare workers, but he wants students to know how deeply it touched him. touch.
“I was deeply, deeply touched more than I expected,” he said.
“And the emotions that came out of it were very healing to be honest. Very cathartic and very necessary. It was the last thing I expected. »
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
