Rebekah McDonald knew strict new travel restrictions were coming in just a few days.  She was relieved her 20 year old son would be coming home January 30, a couple of days ahead of time.  Rebekah had helped arrange for the appropriate PCR test and the family was following all the rules.  She hadn’t seen her son in some time and she was anxious to meet him at the airport and bring him home.  What she didn’t know was the Traveler COVID Isolation Centres were already operating and within a few hours her son would be one of the first guests.

All was going well until the plane landed and all the other passengers walked past.  Her son wasn’t among them.  That’s when Rebekah noticed she was getting a notification from Facebook messenger.  Because her son left his phone plan behind in Arizona, this was his only way of contacting her.  He was being detained and they wouldn’t tell him why.  The test had come back negative.  The airline allowed him on the flight.  But health officials at the Calgary International Airport were not satisfied.

That was the beginning of a short nightmare for the McDonald family.  In retrospect there was a misunderstanding which could have been easily explained at the airport.  It wasn’t.  Instead a distraught mother worried for the safety of her son.  For two days the family struggled to find answers.  They found the quarantine system set up by the Public Health Agency over the proceeding months to protect Canadians from COVID-19, had somehow neglected to think of communicating with the family and loved ones of those affected.

Here Rebekah explains the situation in her own words.

In the days following the release of her son from the quarantine centre, Rebekah has heard the federal government might be looking to make changes.  However the RFI (Request for Information) issued by the federal government back in September states the centres are expected to be in operation for 1 to 2 years.  So far the family has not heard if they’ll be asked to pay for their son’s stay.