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Read the attached editorial and use it as a reference in your…
Read the attached editorial and use it as a reference in your essay.
Lee Chapelle spent years in prison. He has a few lessons on dealing with a solitary existence
By Rosie DiManno Star Columnist
Fri., April 17, 2020 (6 min. read)
Lee Chapelle has done 20 years, 11 months and 13 days of hard time.
Harder than yours, at least, or that of the millions, perhaps billions, around the world who have been self-isolating, self-quarantining, during the coronavirus pandemic, either adhering to public health directives or in mandatory lockdown imposed by governments in wide-ranging efforts to contain transmission.
Chapelle did it behind bars.
“I was an idiot. Have about a hundred convictions and I don’t say that proudly. All property, break-and-enter, stealing, one weapon-related offence. Coming out, failing. Coming out, failing.”
Escaped once, from Maplehurst. “Made it as far as the on-ramp to the 401.” Caught. “Then I went to the penitentiary.”
Two of those years, cumulatively, were spent in solitary.
“One time, I ran headfirst into the wall. I was just looking to blunt the pain. I couldn’t sleep any more tired of sleeping. So I hit the wall, literally and figuratively.” One can go quite mad in solitude.
That’s why, as of last Dec. 1, an amendment to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act eliminated administrative and disciplinary segregation for inmates of Canada’s federal prisons.
Critics slammed the adjustment as merely rebranding. Segregation units were to be replaced with “structured intervention units” still 10-by-6-foot cells, with concrete walls and solid metal doors. But prisoners are entitled to four hours outside their cells for “meaningful human contact.”
Many of us would settle for meaningless human contact, the thing we once took for granted.
We are all exhausted by strictures against free movement, endless admonishment to stay inside, limit grocery runs to once every two weeks, refrain from gatherings of more than five people (although walking the dog is OK). Daily strolls or jogs (if you insist) are OK, maintaining the two-metre distance from others. Medical appointments are OK.
You can either scream into the abyss or try to make the best of it.
But, the keening from some of the commentaries notwithstanding, we are not captives of COVID-19 in a literal sense.
Nor is this a “war” a cheap and irritating analogy as if we’re all existing in a post-dystopian society, struggling for survival.
Food delivered to the front door isn’t a hardship. Stepping onto the balcony to bang pots in recognition of health care workers, scavenging the shelves for toilet paper, vehicular corteges of appreciation ringing nursing homes: these are but some of the liberties which haven’t been constricted. (Unlike the poor souls who reside at those long-term homes, decimated by deadly contagion, who really are, fundamentally, incarcerated.)
For the rest of us, it’s more about prolonged boredom, tedium, restlessness and depression. Bingeing on Netflix and hunkering over thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles.
Blasted with advice on staying sane in shuttered stasis, from mental health counsellors to that peculiar breed who call themselves life coaches, to astronauts who’ve spent months on the International Space Station. There’s lively social media debate about which is worse: solo segregation or being cooped up with spouses and children getting on your last nerve.
Folks such as Chapelle, however, who’ve known genuine loss of freedom, can tell us a thing or two about coping in these weird times.
“The advantage that I think I hold is having been through this and having come out the other side, many times over,” says the 52-year-old, who now works as a consultant for first-time offenders primarily, preparing release plans for them, training lawyers and other professionals who deal with the convict demographic.
“There’s a real strength that you build up and there’s a resilience that you build up through the process of knowing that you’ll make it through.
The Task:
In a well-structured essay, discuss THREE pieces of advice you can give someone on how to make the best of the COVID-19 quarantine. Make TWO specific references to the Toronto Star editorial and cite them (in-text citations) using MLA (Modern Language Association) format. You should follow the structure of a five-paragraph essay that has an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
Submit an outline, an edited rough copy, and a final copy.
Carefully proof read your final copy
