Everything’s Open and Few Are Sick in Canada’s Atlantic Bubble

Right next door, in Quebec, where three in five of Canada’s virus deaths have hit, rage over new lockdowns is palpable. In Ontario, ICUs are filling up. Out west, caseloads are hitting records, not to mention the exploding disaster across the U.S., which is shutting down yet again.

But in four eastern Canadian provinces, group limits have been raised and internal travel fostered. The region of 2.4 million has banded together, barred outsiders, hewed tightly to health guidelines and has a Covid-19 death rate a 10th of the country’s. With almost no one noticing -- and that’s how they like it -- Atlantic Canada, an outpost of quiet obedience and aging rural stoicism, has become a pandemic Shangri-La.