Photo courtesy of Natalie Long

By Chris Brown

A unique memento

Time capsule will provide something to look back on years after COVID-19

Apr 2, 2020 | 4:52 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Thinking and hoping this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, Natalie Long wanted some way to look back on the COVID-19 pandemic, even if it’s not the happiest of situations.

She began by trying to document the day with her family and keeping mementos such as artwork her children were doing.

“Everyone is going to talk about it. You know, ‘what grade were you in when you couldn’t go to school?,’ that sort of thing. And their kids are going to ask them,” says Long.

What started as just a simple About Me page for her children quickly developed into more. She posted about it on her professional Facebook page – Long Creations – to get ideas for other pages and quickly had an 11-page time capsule document.

With the good response she got to that post she decided to post the finished document online for others to download and work on.

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“It’s gone a little crazy,” says Long, with a laugh.

There are pages in the book for everyone to jot down how they’re connecting with others, leave hand prints, track special occasions and more.

Long never thought of charging anybody for the document. So when people offered to donate to her, she turned it back on them. She suggested donations to groups providing assistance during COVID-19 or paying it forward some other way.

“Everybody financially is quite strained right now, everybody is stressed out and many parent are at home with their kids because the kids aren’t going to school. I don’t want to profit off of something like this,” she says.

You can download the time capsule worksheet through Google Drive. You can also try this original Dropbox link, but Long informs us they’ve both seen an overload of traffic so you may have to try a few times.

You can also try this Let’s Embark link, which has been updated to include an version of the time capsule for adults.

Note: This story has been updated to add the second and third download links and the overload issue.