Best of Vancouver Sun and The Province: Most memorable stories of 2020

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The impact of COVID-19 on business hit home the most by October when I was interviewing Bri Corbett, who owns and operates the Fun and Games arcade in Kamloops with her husband Dave. With revenue running at 45 to 50 per cent of normal, they were having a tough time keeping their non-essential livelihood going.

“Our biggest worry is that if there’s another shutdown, that would be the death knell for us,” Bri told me.

The economy can recover from the COVID-19 disaster, people who succumb to the disease cannot, but that interview laid out in simple terms the sacrifices a lot of small business owners are making that we will also need to come back from.

depenner@postmedia.com

Denise Ryan

A missing hiker and the kindness of strangers

In the year of COVID-19, the story of a missing hiker and a group of dedicated volunteers was a reminder that the love and care we hold for each other will never be lost.

Jordan Naterer, 25, went for a solo hike over Thanksgiving weekend in Manning Park. Friends notified the authorities after the engineer, who hailed from Newfoundland, failed to show up for Thanksgiving dinner. A search party was mobilized but called off by authorities on Oct. 17 after all leads had been exhausted.

Naterer’s parents flew out from St. John’s, N.L., to search for their son, but eventually had to return home to care for their other two children.

The kindness of strangers has kept hope alive, and kept the search for Naterer going. Determined individuals, like Jyoti Parmar, who never met Naterer, have devoted countless hours to distributing posters, scouring drone footage and searching the rough, snowy terrain for Naterer — a reminder that in spite of all that has been lost in this year of the pandemic — we can still come together as a community, to give our best in the hope of helping others.