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Vital Support (2024) is an image of the Montreal General Hospital during COVID-19 one wintery day in January 2024 when the virus was raging. This ward is a space welcoming the sick. Hospitals have fewer staff than before 2020, putting enormous pressure on the medical system (CBC News, 2023; Reuters, 2023). During our time, we receive disparate information with which to contend. Still with us is continual news that the pandemic is over, yet the virus is mutating; we must be careful, yet we should live and let live. With frequent exposures to viral loads, we continually navigate ways to respond.

We are in the middle of healthcare reforms, confronting hospitals closing/moving/altering, professional healthcare burnout, and massive labour shortages. Reshifting (2024) is an image of change. Increasingly, Canadians find themselves without doctors, and hospital ERs are now rampant with overcrowding. Last year, more than 31,000 Canadian patients died while on waiting lists for medical surgeries (National Post Staff, 2023, December 19).  It is an era of structural modifications and high costs, resource limitations, and lack of funding. The challenge: meeting the needs of the sick, elderly, and disabled. There is more incentivization for private clinics and reshaping public healthcare. The sands are shifting.