April 18, 2021

GOING FAR, WIDE FOR A VACCINE SHOT AT NEW MINDEN ARENA

MINDEN — There’s a new rink here.

And the first players getting and taking shots are hoping to score a win against COVID.

The S.G. Nesbitt Arena (named after the pioneering family and the reeve at the turn of last century) was built last year and was due to open in December.

But the pandemic replaced the first drop of a puck.

So nets are in storage and several hundred red plastic seats remain in shrink-wrap.

A pristine concrete ice surface glistens beneath the glaring white heat of high-wattage lights that sparkle and radiate a rural TV studio ready for a Hockey Night in Canada face-off.

The antiseptic feel fits its first official purpose — a vaccination clinic by the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge Health Unit (HKPRHU) that opened just two weeks ago.

And it’s drawing daily crowds that hockey teams can only dream of anticipating. A joint basketball court, gym and rec centre complement it.

Residents across Central Ontario are getting a glimpse of the smart new centre as they seek out the first available anti-coronavirus appointments.

Admittedly it only took 5 minutes to book this appointment for one week later an hour east of Muskoka.

And so if it’s worth the drive to Acton — it’s certainly worth the drive to Minden, home of the Dominion Hotel and one of the last Stedman’s Stores in Ontario.

A pretty little cottage town once, which has preserved some of its Twin Lakes charm and still has one of two county hospitals along with the nearby Town of Haliburton.

But all yellow signs point to the new arena.

It’s where people go to prevent going to the hospitals.

With its looming wood and rock façade on a hillside, the rink is inviting from the outside, surrounded on all sides by a large number of low-rise community housing unit, the curling club a lawn bowling club and small, simple skateboard park.

**Under the bright lights of the new $12.4 million rec centre it’s a whole new game in Minden as hundreds are travelling throughout Central Ontario to get the fastest, nearest vaccine injection.**

Minden Rotary Club volunteers greet guests on the granite steps, offering a friendly “welcome” while opening the door to the lobby and wearing blue surgical masks.

From the next step forward all the health-care workers’ faces are seen and heard through the lens of both the blue mask and their clear face shield.

Everyone else entering wears their own PPE.

First up is another helpful person whose name tag reads: ‘Hello. My name is Gayle” and who offers a squirt of hand sanitizer while exchanging pleasantries and motioning to the registration table.

A quick check of your health card and Jackie confirms you for the appointed hour as she ticks your name off on a piece of paper printed with hundred of names expected late last Friday afternoon.

“Through that door …” and it’s into the arena where your life flashes before your eyes, your senses stunned by the intensity of the Klieg-like lights from the girded heaven above.

Is this the end of life — or the beginning of the end?

Anne, a comforting health unit worker, reassures it’s the latter rather than the former.

Then she oft-handedly announces today vaccine du jour is Pfizer — news that’s silently greeted with nods around.

After a brief five minutes to adjust to the jarring surroundings, you’re ushered up a small makeshift wooden accessible ramp and likewise on to the playing surface like a star waiting their entrance on the stage.

Blue lines on the floor are arrows that point the way — and have nothing to do with off side.

“This way …” shouts another volunteer in a bright red golf shirt who escorts you to another stop line — this one red — and on you must not cross presumably for fear of contamination.

On your left is row-upon-row of eerie-looking 10-foot walls of translucent plastic, which silhouette people lucky by all Ontario accounts to be seated here.

Each of the three double-sided pods is lettered A to G. Seated six-feet apart within are a dozen anxious vaccinators-to-be, a couple of volunteers about and two health care workers with wheels.

“Have a seat, have your health card ready and the nurse will be right with you,” smiles Frannie, as she uses a black ink marker on the wall to note the time you took your seat.

“Any questions …?”

Seated with chair sideways and with nothing to do but look, listen, learn — and read your cellphone — you patiently wait your turn destiny.

This is where you get to watch more than a half-dozen others be registered, questioned, poked and jabbed in seamless, endless, assembly-line fashion.

A chance for a trial run of your emotions, as you ponder and more than existentially request of yourself: “Why am I here?”

Ten minutes or less later — every 12^th person — the nice nameless health unit nurse (I forgot her name) rolls over in her chair as a staff technician (her HKPRHU lanyard dangling) trails behind to type on a stand-up, desktop tablet.

The latter gets the health card, the former a chance to query about your basic health and well-being.

Then it’s sleeve up, swab, needle in and safely disposed.

Vaccination complete, there’s smile, a grateful “thanks” — and with the wheels in motion move a metre ahead to repeat the procedure again.

Three minutes and the months of waiting is over — for now.

**It only took five minutes to book Friday’s vaccine appointment for reporter Mark Clairmont, and precisely 30 minutes to get in and out with a Pfizer vaccine.**

Frannie comes back and adds 15 minutes to your time.

You sit, wait, watch others checking their phones or watches and — relieved — you grin, glad it’s over so effortlessly, painlessly and relatively fast.

Thirty minutes precisely — and ahead by one minute of my scheduled appointment.

Time up, Frannie asks: “Are you OK,” then she wipes your board and points to another volunteer at the end of the pod who is waving like a traffic cop.

Your erased and dismissed.

No cookie to get your blood sugar back up like the people taking blood.

Exit, stage left points the windmill operator flailing toward a table where Mike sits and Bary stands.

Mike asks for your health card (as if you could get this far without one) and then gets you to repeat your name and birth date.

Voila! Out pops a receipt with who, when, where and what you got.

And you’ve got solid gold proof that you’ve been vaccinated — and the makings of your own first vaccine passport — albeit printed on a flimsy piece of printer paper.

Then it’s goodbye on to the backdoor Bary, who secrets you out behind what would normally have been the net and past a small waiting area with a stretcher for hopefully only emergency use.

No chance to celebrate the win today.

Outside in the comparatively dim sunlight there’s a sigh of relief.

And the thought of doing it all over again in four months or less.

Just not at the same location, as complaints from clamoring hockey players who want to hit the new ice this summer have led to a TBD change of venue come June.

Perhaps it’ll give me time to inject some game in to my three-point range on a different playing court in Minden.

And I won’t have to jump through so many hoops to get here again.

Follow MuskokaTODAY.com in a visit to Minden for the vaccine in this Photo Gallery below. Click on photo to enlarge.