Small business owner found guilty of staying open & letting people make their own health choices

Society is in trouble if we do not come to realize how absurd these charges are.

This week, the North Bay-Parry Sound Health Unit gleefully issued a press release on their website.

It wasn’t to announce any plan to address the mental health crisis, the opioid epidemic or any number of critical actual health issues in our community.

No. It was to announce that after spending an incredible amount of money on a legal case over three years, they were successful in prosecuting a small business owner for crimes they commited in 2021.

The crimes that the health unit spent three years pursuing? Alexandra Stewart was found guilty of selling flooring and paints to the public. And more seriously, for respecting shoppers’ personal health choices and letting them choose if they wanted to wear a mask or not.

Stewart operates Stewart’s Decorating, a building materials/decorating storefront in North Bay. In 2021 while local hospitals were empty and we had some of the lowest COVID case numbers in the country, North Bay was uniquely kept in an extended lockdown.

Businesses like Stewart’s were not allowed to remain open but her competitors like Home Depot and Lowes who sold the same exact products were allowed to. Businesses in larger cities across the country were also allowed to stay open.

The rules made absolutely no sense even if the data would have supported restrictions. But they didn’t.

This graph is taken today from Public Health Ontario’s own website.

Stewart took a moral stand in 2021. She remained opened and serviced her customers. Because of her courage, and because others stood up throughout 2021 (which culminated with the Trucker’s Convoy in early 2022), the health authorities never again tried to impose these draconian rules.

Even though the case data and hospitalization was far worse in 2023 and 2024, no small businesses were ever ordered to close again. No individual was forced to make a certain health choice to wear a mask or socially distance.

And what did Stewart get for being one of the few to actually take a stand against the draconian rules? She got convicted of 36 offences this week. How our courts came to this conclusion is incomprehensible. But what is so incredibly demoralizing is reading the online commentary regarding this news story. The overwhelming majority of commenters are praising the health unit for pursuing this business owner.

The majority of the public is still in denial. They still want to pretend like lockdowns were justified. They still want to pretend like vaccines worked (even though 95% of them won’t even take them anymore despite being recommended to do so).

I can only assume it is because they are terrified to face the reality that they were fooled.

Mark Twain once said “it’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled”. His words cannot describe this era any better. People are praising this conviction not because they think Stewart did anything wrong by staying open with virtually no COVID hospitalizations (compared to 2023 and 2024).

They are praising the convictions because THEY WANT Stewart to be morally wrong. THEY WANT lockdowns to have been justified. But she was right.*

*PS: If anyone objects to this or wants to debate me on it, please let me know. I absolutely cannot understand how someone can argue that it was wrong to operate a small business and make a living in 2021. I’ll forgive you for supporting this in 2021 but please give your head a shake if you still attempt to convince yourself of this after all we know in 2024. (SEE PUBLIC HEALTH ONTARIO GRAPH ABOVE)

How Far We Went: The complete historical account of how far Canada went during the COVID-19 era is now available on Amazon.