How Canadian households can confront their debt

Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “We learned a lot of lessons in smallpox, but one of them is the absolute necessity of coalitions” — William “Bill” Foege, a leader of the 21-year campaign to eradicate the deadly scourge, accomplished 40 years ago today. Foege says the lengthy campaign holds lessons to the current international race for a COVID-19 vaccine.

The number of Canadians infected with COVID-19 has topped 65,000, while more than 4,400 people have died. Worldwide, 3.9 million people have been infected while 270,000 have died.

One indication of the extent of Montreal’s COVID-19 outbreak: The city’s Jewish General Hospital was ordered by the provincial government to empty its in-patient psychiatric ward in preparation for the arrival of infected patients from nearby psychiatric units that were grappling with uncontrolled outbreaks, the Montreal Gazette reports.

In Canada, two million people lost their jobs in April, causing the unemployment rate to surge to 13 per cent. In the United States, more than 20 million lost their jobs, as its unemployment rate spiked to 14.7 per cent. The Financial Times put the economic toll into context with a banner headline, “Britain on brink of worst recession since great frost of 1709, BoE [Bank of England] warns.”

With Mother’s Day on Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has a suggestion for a perfect gift from kids to their moms: clean the house for Mother’s Day. “I do have a personal interest in sharing this message with the children of Canada,” the mother of three admits.

Baking has been good for England’s ancient mills. For more than 1,000 years, there has been a grain mill in Sturminster Newton, England. Usually, workers at the mill hand out small packages of grain to visiting tourists and school children. Now the facility is in full-time production, using a stock of milling grain to provide flour to local shops. It isn’t alone. Shipton Mill, a commercial venture on the River Avon that is nearly as old, sells ancient varieties of flours. The mill received 10,000 online orders in three days.

Elvis Francois and William Robinson, orthopaedic surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., became viral stars with their impromptu recordings of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Bill Withers’s “Lean On Me.” Now, they’ve debuted at No. 21 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart with an EP, Music is Medicine. All proceeds go to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy's COVID-19 Response Fund.

Gritty, the mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers, with a ping pong ball, a red plastic cup and a lot of time to waste. The result is definitely not boring.

—Patricia Treble

As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.