OLDS — Former Olds Grizzlys head coach Dana Lattery and his partner Janine Deanna have been doing their part to spread a message of togetherness and positivity during the COVID-19 lockdown.
They’ve been taking pictures of various families in the community at their front windows or doors displaying messages of hope, inspiration, and confidence that we’ll all get through this, one way or another. They called the project From Olds With Love.
The project has been so popular that lately the couple have been taking similar photos of families as far away as Okotoks and Ghost Lake, near Cochrane.
Lattery says he got the idea around mid March, shortly after the lockdown began.
“I was out for a walk on the south end of town and on my way back in, I saw people – probably more than usual – sitting in their living rooms watching TV,” he said during an interview.
“And almost every house was occupied with people, which was kind of intriguing, because during the week, you don’t see that during the day.
“I just thought it was an interesting vision of everybody in their own homes and really not allowed to leave.
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“Probably there was a lot of fear. There was a lot of fear of the unknown, fear of the perceived virus that’s happening and I just thought it would be kind of cool if we somehow as photographers, could capture this,” he added.
So they began driving around and taking photos of willing participants at a safe distance.
“Some people had some pretty cool messages to share with everybody and it was very uplifting for us,” he said.
As word began to get around of what they were doing, people in other communities began reaching out to Lattery and Deanna to have their photos taken doing the same thing.
So over the past month or so, in addition to Olds, they’ve taken photos of locked-in and social distancing families in Airdrie, Crossfield, Okotoks, Cochrane, and Ghost Lake.
“It’s interesting; when people share hope that’s empowering, because they just have faith in something and they believe in something that is going to get us through this,” Lattery said.
“So that was very inspiring for us — to just actually realize that it was going to be OK. At what level or what time we didn’t know, but yeah, the positivity is very contagious.”
