Canadians reflect on COVID-19 pandemic 5 years later: ‘How did we survive?’

The World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, set into motion policies that would upend the lives of Canadians for years to come.

There had been warning signs for months.

There were the reports of dangerous flu-like symptoms in Asia. News of the lockdown that kept tens of millions of people inside their homes in China. Here at home, the growing ubiquity of blue surgical masks. The advice to sing “Happy Birthday” while washing your hands.

In March 2020, Ren Navarro recalled seeing large bottles of hand sanitizer at a beer event in Guelph, Ont., where she was a panellist. The Queen of Craft crowd was thinner than it should’ve been. It was being live-streamed for people at home.

“This was kind of like the unknowing precursor to what was going to happen,” she said in a recent interview.

Days later, Navarro awoke to news of a sweeping shutdown meant to rein in the spread of the novel coronavirus in Ontario — measures that would soon intensify and take hold across the country.

It was her 45th birthday.

“I just remember, at some point, sitting on the sofa and crying,” she said, even though she hadn’t planned anything special to mark the occasion. Soon came the official stay-at-home order. Her world was suddenly contained to a two-bedroom apartment in Kitchener, Ont., with her wife, two cats, and no work.

The World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, set into motion policies that would upend the lives of Canadians for years to come – from the closing of borders, to shutting down schools and businesses, to banning social gatherings.