Happy Canada Day everyone! Please note that due to the holiday today, all of our classes will be postponed to give everyone a well deserved break. Classes will resume on our online schedule tomorrow.

As we all celebrate our nation’s holiday a little bit differently this year, don’t forget that we are all in this together. By doing our part, and trying our best to keep everyone safe, happy, and healthy.

Canadians are strong, resilient, and proud, and as difficult as that might be right now, we ask you to show your spirit this year by celebrating online, by your household, or your small social circle.

Measures are slowly working, and things are starting to open up again, but numbers in some places are still on the rise, and now is definitely not the time to get lazy or comfortable with what you and your family have been doing to do your part.

Many businesses such as Martial Arts Schools are still closed to the public and have been for 107 days now. These places are mostly all small businesses and run by local families and teams of 10 or less people. There has been barely any to no income for almost a third of a year now, all the while there are still bills, rent, and other expenses to be paid during this unfortunate time.

Now there has been support from our government and other programs in place, and it is helpful, please don’t get us wrong, but it is still not as nearly effective or helpful as actually being able to open again and to have our customers enjoy our service and thank us by being able to afford it through their vocations as well.

The best thing that we can wholeheartedly ask for from our students and their family members right now is to PLEASE keep doing the right things regarding everyone’s public health and safety so we can open safely as soon as possible to continue to be a fixture of our local community.

There are many individuals who cannot practice at home, due to comfort, space, timing, or other barriers that don’t make online only learning an effective replacement, and we see that.

Some students use their training for self-defence and fitness, but there are many others who use it as a social outing activity, a place to belong and make new friends, to work on their confidence or other character aspects of their training, or to blow off some steam when they’ve had too much.

Many of our youth don’t fully understand the benefits of their training yet, but we hope their parents do, and it will be a top priority of ours to reinforce their respect, self-discipline, integrity, honesty, and compassion once we can work with them properly again.

We are working on being able to open again soon, and want to once it is safe and proper to do so, with all of the correct approvals from our municipal jurisdiction.

There is still much more to be done, rooms to be cleaned, distances to be marked, supplies to be prepared, but we will need our support of our students once those things are in place so we can continue to serve the community.

It won’t be perfect, things will have to be figured out as they happen, and things might still have to evolve and change over the first days/weeks back, but please be patient with us, as with many of you as well if you had to make these changes at home and/or work, we are all learning and experiencing this for the first time.

I hope that you can all do you part, as we will be doing ours, and keep working to be ready to see all of our friends that we miss so much once we can meet in person again.

Stay safe, happy, and healthy everyone,

• Kyle