Draped over the back of chief public health officer Kami Kandola's office chair is a superhero cape symbolizing her status as the leading fighter against the coronavirus in the Northwest Territories.
"An employee gave me that," she chuckled. "It isn't so much that I am superhuman, but I do have a wicked problem that I need to solve."
Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo
Kandola has been front and centre for the last month as major public health decisions have been rolled out in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The public health emergency on March 18, the closure of the Northwest Territories border, the creation of an enforcement task force and the banning of indoor gatherings all involved Kandola's leadership.
Every government in the NWT has also observed her orders in their plans during the crisis. Municipal governments have had to adjust or suspend services like garbage collection, library service or recreational facilities. Schools across the territory have closed and moved lessons online. Indigenous governments have developed emergency preparation plans, suspended cultural gatherings and supported members moving onto the land for self-isolation. Entire sectors of the economy have been put into uncertainty.
Given her years of work as a medical doctor, she admits that her 17 years in the NWT have prepared her for the current moment to lead the territory through the pandemic.
Born in England and of Indian heritage, Kandola grew up in Montreal and attended McGill University's faculty of medicine, where she graduated in 1992. Two years later, she completed her family medicine residency, travelled internationally to work and did spot duty in northern Quebec.
NNSL file photo
She attended the prestigious John Hopkins University for a public health and preventive medicine residency from 1996 to 1998.
For five years, she also worked in Ottawa as a health specialist consultant with the Canadian International Development Agency. In 2003, she moved to Yellowknife and accepted the position of regional medical health officer under then chief medical officer Dr. Andre Corriveau, who retired last year.
Since coming North, Kandola has been in the media spotlight on and off for public health awareness reasons, but hardly to the extent that she has been in March.
When she was briefly in the role of chief medical health officer in 2009, she oversaw the H1N1 emergency.
"So I came in with experience, and knowing how to deal with a pandemic," she said. "The difference between H1N1 and Covid-19 is that with H1N1 we have antivirals, and we had a vaccine that was developed that fall, and so it was relatively short-lived.
"With the COVID-19 pandemic, there are no effective antivirals and we don't have a vaccine. The other difference is the magnitude that (Covid-19) impacted globally. It's a lot more severe than the H1N1 pandemic."
Kandola said much of her style of leadership is owed to mentorship from Corriveau, a fellow Montreal native, whom she has known for 26 years.
"One of the things he always impressed on me was that when being a really good public health leader, we can carry a stick and carry the power of the law," she said. "But a really good public health leader, rarely needs to use the stick, and we prefer using the carrot. "
Personal life
These days, Kandola said she gets much support from her family, including her husband Norman Mair, whom she married in July 2006. She has three step-daughters and one 11-year-old son, who attends William McDonald School.
NNSL file photo
Like other families in the North, she said she has had to make recent adjustments to her life. Last Sunday, she was unable to attend Easter services at the Church of Christ. Instead, she tuned into the pastor's online service.
She has also been unable to follow her regular fitness routines, which she enjoys as a social exerciser at Breakaway Fitness.
Due to the heavy workload, her responsibilities cut into her personal life at times.
"What's been difficult is I've been working every day since (the beginning of the pandemic), that includes weekends and weekdays," she said. "When I'm home, I'm constantly on my iPhone so even when I'm home I not may not be available. It's been hard on my son because he hasn't had any physical play dates going onto the third week."
However, she said the pandemic has also presented brief opportunities where she is connecting more with family members who have been home more often. Enjoying dinners or taking recreational hikes in and around the city to refresh from work are key moments, she said.
"For sure you think about what's important and I think after all this is over, I'm going to come back and treasure those times where we've been eating around the table and talking and engaging," she said of her family time.
On leadership and decision-making
Kandola said her decision-making process is one that she has carefully considered. Moving aggressively, being timely and stepping back to reflect are hallmarks of responding to the virus, she suggested.
Like other provincial and territorial chief medical officers across the country, she has been watching the virus since January and its patterns in Wuhan, China; the United States; Europe; and other parts of Canada. She has taken lessons on how to respond to the virus.
"The one thing that I learned is that speed trumps protection," she said. "The timing of a public health measure is going to be critical in terms of the fallout."
The March 18 public emergency, which was followed a few days later with border restrictions and mandatory self-isolation orders, was motivated by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment stating in early March that there was expected to be more than 1,000 students returning to Yellowknife after spring break.
"It suddenly occurred to me that we were literally getting thousands of people coming back in a short period of time, from all over the world, from all over Canada," Kandola said. "And I knew that of those thousands of people, there were going to be people bringing Covid back. There wasn't anything I could do with that fact other than say, 'We cannot prevent Covid-19 coming."
Though the first case in the NWT had come before March 18, the other four were dealt with adequately as they were put into self-isolation and earlier contact with others was minimal.
"It was that single measure of border restrictions and mandatory self-isolation that I feel prevented the community spread because we weren't sitting there looking at contacts or people. We weren't waiting for symptoms. Only people in the household were exposed and no one else," she explained.
In other parts of Canada, namely her home province of Quebec, March break had come earlier in the month and the province responded late.
"I would have been playing catch-up like Quebec," she said of the differing circumstances. "Unfortunately, we have now all learned how when March break is placed can really impact where you are in terms of the outbreak response. So we're now pretty much in containment and we can say that the virus here is travel related. We're trying to contain it and prevent it from becoming mainstreamed into the communities."
