Two of Ottawa’s top schools have seen a “once-in-a-lifetime” humanitarian vacation to a Caribbean orphanage canceled due to fears that students and staff could contract COVID-19 during their vacation.
About twenty students from the Collège catholique Mer Bleue and the Collège catholique Franco-Ouest were scheduled to stop in the Dominican Republic during the March holidays. They were preparing to depart on March 14 and return to Ottawa 8 days later.
But on Tuesday, academics learned that their school board, the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est, had canceled all foreign courses due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In an email, the school board said it had made the decision to cancel all foreign activities “due to the accumulation of cases of the COVID-19 virus around the world,” and that it would notify parents “in due course” if and when it resumed.
Anabelle Price, a 12th grader at Mer Bleue, disagrees with this general policy, noting that there is only one confirmed case of the virus in the Dominican Republic.
“There’s a greater chance that we’ll have it here than there, if you compare the number of cases,” Price said.
The 17-year-old said she stockpiled $2,000 to pay for her trip to the Dominican Republic, where students would volunteer at an orphanage and help renovate a local school. The Ottawa students would also have stayed at the orphanage.
Léa Roy, a classmate of Price’s, also 17, said she cried after the cancellation. He said the organization worked for more than a year to raise money for the trip.
“We held garage sales, bake sales, we sold ourselves, we went door-to-door picking up cans and we sold cheese and bedding,” Roy said.
The schoolchildren picked up a suitcase full of toys, books and clothes, possessions they planned to give away to the young people they met.
“The orphanage depended on us for our services, our money, our donations. They’re counting on us to get it all out there and be there that week,” Price said.
Roy’s mother, Sylvie Demers, said she was disappointed that her daughter missed out on a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity and said the decision to cancel the award deserved to have been left to the academics themselves.
“These students are in 12th grade. They’re very close to coming of age,” Demers said. “They are very mature academics who have been consulted because they fully perceive what is going on in the world. “
Officials from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Ottawa Catholic School Board met to discuss the effect of COVID-19 and said they would soon make a decision on pending school trips.
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