Consider the Snark

When future historians tell the tale of this unending nightmare, they will have plenty of primary source material from which to draw. But to save themselves some trouble, those distant scribes might simply lift passages from The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Carroll’s wonderful nonsense poem from 1876.

On the constancy and conviction of Doug Ford or Jason Kenney or François Legault, for example, they might observe, “He was thoughtful and grave — but the orders he gave / Were enough to bewilder a crew.” On the various restrictions that have kept large shopping ­centres open and small outdoor patios closed, they might note that “the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.” On the clarity of public health messaging, they might recount how officials “all spoke at once, so that none of them knew / One word that the others had said.” And on the daily numbers, they might point...