The Lighter Side of the Pandemic

In 2005, I was asked to create a monthly comic strip for the magazine, "Massage Therapy Today", published by my professional association, Registered Massage Therapists' Association of Ontario (RMTAO). My comics were published there for many issues and were then posted in the association's e-news, "The Friday File". Then March 2020 rolled around and the COVID 19 pandemic struck. Fear and anxiety gripped everyone's hearts as we watched the death toll rise. Social distancing was imposed and our massage clinics, and other businesses, shut their doors for as long as it took to get a handle on this new virus. It's taken much longer than we thought. The RMTAO was still publishing "The Friday File" e-news and my "Adventures From Karen's Clinic" comic strip continued to be posted. Due to isolating at home, it transformed into "Adventures From Karen's Home". I've always been inspired by funny events that happened during a massage session or when other RMT's shared their experiences. Trust me, when I say that I was never short of ideas. You clients are hilarious! But wait, that's not all! Other cartoon ideas that didn't fit into the Adventure's format kept coming to me. I wanted to record amusing pandemic scenarios and the goofy ways we sometimes deal with stress. The results are the cartoons within these pages. This souvenir cartoon book chronicles the beginning of the pandemic through to the introduction of the vaccines. This isn't over yet, but hopefully we'll all be back to some kind of "better" normal sooner than later. I hope you enjoy reading these cartoons as much as I enjoyed drawing them.