Yesterday, when I was at Chemainus Theatre waiting to watch a brilliant adaptation of It’s A Wonderful Life, I overheard a conversation between some women seated behind me. They were discussing the local sugar shortage. Apparently there is no sugar to be found in any grocery store anywhere in Nanaimo.

This reminded me of the early days of the Covid crisis when there was a rush on toilet paper and, simultaneously, sugar. (There is possibly a coincidence/causation discussion there, which I will avoid.) When the shelves were bare of granulated sugar, my eldest son bought some boxes of sugar cubes so that we would have something in reserve. I still have my box of cubes … or most of them, anyway.

Tonight, as I watch TV and I have my usual craving for something sweet, I am reminded that I have only about half a kilogram of granulated white sugar, a fistful of brown sugar and, thankfully, most of that box of sugar cubes. This limited supply and the memory of the theatre chat led me to restrain my gastronomic urges and to resist making cookies or a dessert of any kind. As a child of “You can’t have dessert until you eat your supper,” this was a real struggle. This evening I did, after all, dutifully eat my supper, so my inner child deserved dessert, but I chose to write this blog instead. I can feel the virtual pats on my head already!

As an attempt to distract myself from the sugar craving, I went online to see if I could discover the reason for the empty shelves. As with all drugs, it turned out to be a supply issue.

Rogers Sugar is the primary source for my sugar fix and they are now in their seventh week of a labour strike. As a consequence, all of western Canada is now without sugar. Whatever secondary sources of supply there once were have already been exhausted, and so grocery stores, donut shops, bakers, and ordinary everyday addicts are now completely out of luck.

The question now becomes, what shall I do with my limited sugar stash? Shall I use it all up by making baked goods and freeze the results, or hang on to my reserves in case the strike goes on until Christmas? Maybe I could just look at it daily, dip a fingernail into the supply and give it a lick to stave off the cravings. I could even sniff it, but that would be going too far, even for me.

Despite these early days of sugar withdrawal, my sympathies are with the strikers. I am a lifelong supporter of union organizations and their efforts on behalf of workers worldwide. Go sugar people! Your demands for fair wages and a humane number of work hours per week are absolutely reasonable, and I will survive my temporary sugar realignment. And, maybe, just maybe, this will be good for all of us.