Your Blue Jays prospect is hurt? Try driving four hours for an MRI, tabarnak.

Bonjour from the North — three cities, one corridor, and the stories that don't make it south of Barrie.

So, you're hearing about Trey Yesavage and his shoulder issue, right? Blue Jays fans down in Toronto are probably bummed about a top pitching prospect starting the season on the IL. And yeah, that's tough for the team. But for us up here in Sault Ste. Marie, when we hear about someone needing an MRI or specialized care, it hits different.

It’s not just a prospect getting sidelined; it's a reminder of what we deal with every single day. If one of our Greyhounds got a serious shoulder injury, a lot of the time, they'd be on Highway 17, driving four, five, six hours to Sudbury or even down to Toronto for proper imaging or to see a specialist. We’re not talking about a pro athlete with private care, we’re talking about your neighbour, your cousin who works at Algoma Steel, someone from Garden River First Nation or Batchewana First Nation. We’re constantly fighting to keep our medical services up here, to get the federal funding we need for our highways, and then you see headlines about a *minor* league player’s shoulder, and it's like, *eh bien*, maybe the rest of the province could use a dose of Northern reality. We're not complaining about the athlete, but the perspective, you know?

That's why when I hear about Trey Yesavage, I'm thinking about all the people up here who can't just walk into a clinic. It's not about being a "resource colony" for Southern Ontario; it's about being seen as a vital part of this province. Maybe if more people understood our distances, our limited access, they'd understand why things like healthcare access get us so fired up.

Marc-André Desjardins, Sault Ste. Marie.

For more of this kind of talk, my friends on the morning show dive into it every day at mornings.live.