Saint John — The Port City is offering up Partridge Island to the world as a quarantine zone, where the sick can recover at a safe distance from the relatively healthy Saint John population.
“Cruise season is undoubtedly going to take a hit this year,” said Mayor Don Darling, “and in order to recoup those losses, we’ll be allowing countries from around the world to bring the coronavirus-infected to Partridge Island, where they can all be quarantined for two weeks. Governments can e-transfer the City of Saint John $500 per sick person, non-refundable. It’s a pretty good deal, all things considered.”
Darling, standing a hockey-stick’s length from our reporter, seemed to be unaware that Trudeau has closed the Canadian borders, and that legally no sick people from outside the country will be allowed to take respite on the creepy abandoned island.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore!” quoted Darling. “Well don’t give them to me — I mean, gross, right?! — but airlift them in to the island and leave them for a while. There’s already a helicopter pad there, and the place has been broken in as a quarantine zone a long time ago — it was made for this plague!”
Many who have visited Partridge Island say the underground tunnels are scary enough without filling them up with sick people.
“I went there on a sunny day in July and it still made my skin crawl,” said uptown resident Anna Elias. “It’s pitch-black in some places, foggy in others, it’s damp and probably haunted, it’s covered in skull-and-crossbones graffiti, there are rusty chains hanging from the rafters, and there are already hundreds of bodies buried there!
“Actually the more I talk about it, the more I realize it sounds pretty much the same as uptown Saint John anyway. It can’t be too much worse.”
Darling said that, because he’s not throwing his hat in the ring for re-election, he hopes this new effort will be what he’s remembered for as mayor.
“I want to be known as the guy who helped cure people of a deadly illness and who injected some cash into this city. Not just as the slightly unhinged guy who complained nonstop on social media about people badmouthing myself or Saint John.
“Maybe it’s not too late to turn this awful situation around!” he added, “and who knows — perhaps we can even stop the virus while we’re at it!”