COVID-19 and its consequences made you click a lot in 2020. However, it is a text unrelated to the pandemic that has been the most popular. Here is the list of the 11 texts that have been read the most on the Acadie Nouvelle website this year.
1 – Lost for 13 days, Jenny McLaughlin tells about her nightmare
In July, Jenny McLaughlin went for a walk in the woods near Bathurst. What had to be a walk of a few hours has become a most difficult ordeal. For 13 days, this 34-year-old woman was lost in the forest. She survived somehow by eating berries and drinking rainwater. It is by far the most read text on our website in 2020.
2 – Schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year
New Brunswick Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Dominic Cardy announced on April 2 that all schools would remain closed for the remainder of the school year. He also indicated that the children would have to continue their learning at home.
3 – Relaxation of confinement rules
In late April, after several weeks of lockdown, the provincial government announced a relaxation of the rules. New Brunswickers were therefore able to resume frequenting outdoor public spaces. They may also have formed a “bubble” with another household.
4 – New Brunswick goes to the second phase of deconfinement
At the beginning of May, New Brunswick passed to the second phase of deconfinement, the famous “orange phase”. Offices, businesses and restaurants were able to reopen their doors provided they had an operational plan in response to COVID-19.
5 – Hairdressing salons are preparing for a long-awaited reopening
At the end of April, hairdressers and barbers were impatiently waiting for the government to allow them to resume their activities. In this report, our journalist Simon Delattre told how the entrepreneurs were preparing for the reopening.
6 – COVID-19: A couple’s dream trip from Shediac turns into a nightmare
In 2019, Joanne Losier and Louis Vallée left Shediac aboard a sailboat for a long trip. They planned to go to Florida and then go to the Bahamas. The pandemic came like a dog in a bowling game and turned their journey into a nightmare.
7 – Three very great white sharks off the coast of Nova Scotia
In August, interactive maps showed three great white sharks were found near southwestern Nova Scotia. The northernmost shark spotted near Lunenburg was a shark nicknamed Hal. It was a 12 and a half foot adult male weighing 1,420 pounds.
8 – COVID-19: a telephone line to denounce those who refuse to obey
Shortly after the start of the pandemic in March, the provincial government set up a whistleblower hotline. People have been asked to report businesses, industries and citizens who disobey the guidelines related to COVID-19.
9 – A giant lobster in Caraquet
La Poissonnerie Pro-Mer in Caraquet received a new (and huge) tenant in May; a lobster weighing 15.2 pounds. It was a rare and very impressive specimen, but one that did not break any records. The largest lobster ever caught was 1.2 meters tall and weighed 44.4 pounds. He was over 100 years old, according to scientists.
10 – They win $ 18.2 million “by holding on to their dream”
When they learned that the 6/49 lottery jackpot had been won in their hometown, Nicole Parsons and François-Xavier Morency kept their tickets for a while to make the dream last as long as possible. To their surprise, they had the winning ticket in hand. They decided to retire as soon as possible to make way for two people who needed a job more than them.
11 – Coronavirus: unemployment from day one
In March, at the very start of the pandemic, Justin Trudeau announced a plan worth more than $ 1 billion to deal with the economic impact of COVID-19. At the time, there were only a hundred confirmed cases. Since then, approximately 500,000 cases have been discovered and the federal government has released hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the pandemic and stimulate the economy.