If the outpouring of compassion for those killed on Flight 752 is a sign that the picture of who is a Canadian has changed, then the reaction to the new coronavirus will be a test.

As the headlines change from “Public Health Agency says Canadians at low risk from pneumonia in central China” (Jan. 13) to “‘Tip of the iceberg’: With lessons of SARS in mind, experts watching new virus closely” (Jan. 18) to “Human-to-human transmission confirmed in China coronavirus” (Jan. 20), I wonder what the reaction will be if a case is reported closer to home.

My son was barely seven months old at the onset of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto. And although neither he nor I had ever stepped foot in China, his slight cough alarmed the attendant at our neighbourhood bakery enough that she asked, “You’re not staying are you?” after she sold me a cookie and coffee.

There was fear in her face and she clearly did not want me to stay so I left, stashing my drink in the stroller’s cup holder as I pushed my son out the door.

The hardest part to accept was that it wasn’t a random bakery in the middle of nowhere. I had been a regular customer for years even before my son was born. The bakery was in the heart of midtown Toronto where I had never felt out of place. It was my home but the spectre of SARS had changed the way some people saw my son and me.

I understood that fear could make people act in irrational ways but it saddened me, too. It made me wonder how many more decades I’d have to live here to be seen as Canadian first if three were still not enough.

I wondered what my son’s experience would be as he grew — whether his Caucasian father, who could count his “Canadianness” in generations, would afford him a cloak of invisibility when it came to these matters.

A few years later, I would get my answer as one of my son’s school friends expressed surprise that other children would taunt my son with “Chinese sounds” even though his English was very good. That little boy seemed surprised when I explained my son’s English was good because he was born here, just like him, and that our family spoke English at home, just like his.

There hasn’t been a repeat of the incident at the bakery … yet.

Looking back, SARS changed daily life for everyone. Health screenings at airports and hand sanitizer at public spaces, like hospitals, became the norm.

On a personal level, SARS taught me that some didn’t see me to be as Canadian as I felt … especially during a health crisis. But maybe things have changed.

In 1985, all of the passengers on Air India Flight 182 were killed after a bomb exploded. At that time, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney extended condolences to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, even though most of the dead were Canadian.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

When we met years later, my husband and I realized one of the things we had in common was that we had both attended school with children who had died on that flight.

The victims of Flight 752, shot down over Iran earlier this month, have been recognized as Canadians from the start. That is a hopeful sign. But if the new coronavirus is detected here, I wonder if I’ll be welcome to sit after I buy my next cookie.