"Enough is enough. Go home and stay home."
With those words last Monday, Justin Trudeau re-emphasized what most of us already knew - that social distancing is the key weapon in the fight against coronavirus.
Now a few days later, PentictonNow got curious. What are people doing with their time? We hear liquor sales are up, as is Internet traffic. But surely not everyone's on a wall-to-wall diet of Netflix and beer.
Or are they?
So we've started asking around. And one of the first to respond was biologist, author, and Member of Parliament for South Okanagan--West Kootenay Richard Cannings.
Today, Cannings is dutifully distancing himself from everyone. Everyone that is except his wife Margaret Holm, with whom he shares a house and a pastoral plot of land on Penticton's West Bench.
For Cannings, the concept of isolation was hammered home in early March, while physical socializing was still acceptable.
"On March 1st," he says, "I was in a big meeting in Toronto. Then on March 9th, I found out somebody at the meeting had tested positive. And then two of people I had socialized with, both cabinet ministers, had gone into isolation because they'd also had symptoms."
Worse still, Cannings also began experiencing some of the same symptoms. So he contacted his doc, got tested, and immediately went into self-isolation in his Ottawa apartment. When the tests came back negative five days later, he headed home.
And started riding his bike.
Cannings is no cycling newbie. He's been riding even before his knees buckled to the pressure of jogging a few years ago. But now it's become an everyday habit.
He says it gives him "mental relief" and he heartily recommends it - or any outdoor exercise - to anyone able to do it.
"These days I'm working from home and getting much of it done by lunch," he says. "Then I get on the bike for an hour just to get some exercise and fresh air."
"But now when I'm out on my bike, I see people, prominent people in the city, business people, who I'd normally never see exercising on a weekday. They're out running and walking along the river channel, and I often have long-distance conversation with them.
"We're so lucky to live in a place where it's easy to get to places where there aren’t crowds of people, where you can keep your social distance."
Back home, on a property rife with native vegetation and jam-packed bird feeders, Cannings has other things on the go.
Things like a DIY fix for his irrigation system. Turns out a repair he made last year didn't take, so he's now in the midst of digging out a large section of pipe.
Cannings and Holm are also prepping to plant their vegetable garden. "I managed to get out and buy some seed potatoes," he says, "so we're waiting for the weather to warm up. And we're waiting for the garlic to pop up."
When it’s time to head indoors, Cannings admits to a "well-used" Netflix subscription through which he and Holm watch "mindless British Crime stuff like Midsomer Murders, that type of thing."
Music plays a big role too. "We were playing some Leonard Cohen the other day when we heard Montrealers were singing Leonard Cohen songs from their balconies. And I have a memory stick full of music that's usually in my car. Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Van Morrison, stuff like that."
Cannings also plans on breaking out his fiddle. He normally plays once a week with a group of fellow hobby musicians. But with those plans on hold for obvious reasons, he says he'll go it alone for the foreseeable future. "I'm a good fiddler in a mediocre kind of way," he laughs.
Fortunately, he's an even better cook. "My wife and I share the cooking here," he says. "We've been baking a lot of bread, and lately we've been starting to do sourdough bread. And I like making jams, so I pulled a bunch of raspberries from the freezer a couple days ago and made a couple batches of raspberry jam. I think a lot of people are getting back to the old pioneering spirit."
Cannings' mornings are still filled with work, only now it's all from his home office.
"My staff is being deluged for requests from people who either have family stuck overseas, or they don't have an income anymore. I've also just in the last few days started phoning around to people. People who keep our communities going. From womens' shelters to the Brain Injury Society to the Arts Council. Seeing if I can help in any way."
"I talked to someone the other day. Her mother and father have split up and remarried, and both those couples by chance were in Peru at the same time. So both her mother and father are stuck in different parts of Peru.
"So I talked to the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs to see what's going on there. It's more or less just trying to get information to people. So they know there's someone working on this, that they're not forgotten."
And he has a message for his constituents.
"First of all, let's stay safe and stay healthy. Let's stay at home. Let's keep our distance."
"But the big message to the people who are legitimately concerned that they've lost their jobs, the recent announcement that the government is coming up with $2,000 for anyone who had been making income will be a big relief for so many."
And in the meantime, if you happen to spot Cannings whipping around town on his Specialized hybrid, he says he'd love to chat. From a distance.
