The Day Before the World Stopped

On March 10, 2020, I was boiling maple syrup in my backyard, nervously aware the world was about to turn into a disaster movie. I fed wood into my boiler, a bit worried I'd run out before the sap was done boiling. I should have been worried about the upcoming global shortage of good television and anxiety meds.

We knew things were weird and quite frankly scary by March 10th. The news was talking nonstop about a novel coronavirus spreading across the entire globe. We weren't sure what was happening. We weren't sure if it was serious. We really weren't sure of anything.

March 10th continued on normally. I made maple syrup, neighbours stopped by, and 7 p.m. was a time for dinner and slowing down.

The very next day, March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic so I went grocery shopping as one does when the world threatens to fall apart because I needed potato chips.

I would NOT go through a pandemic without Ruffles and dip. This could go on for weeks. I had a list, a cart, and photographic proof that when disaster strikes people either get stupid or group diarrhoea.

Either way I wasn't going home with any toilet paper.

The Great Toilet Paper Heist

In what can only be described as a collective international brain glitch, toilet paper became the hottest commodity on the planet. We could have been panic-buying food or medicine, but no—we went for TP.

The flour disappeared next, followed by yeast, followed by every home baker’s dignity. BOOM we rebounded. We could improve. WE could make sourdough.

Grocery store shelves were stripped bare. People panic-bought pasta, rice, and whatever sad bags of lentils were left at the back of the shelf. Ontario wasn't alone in this—empty aisles stretched from Toronto to Tokyo. France ran out of butter. America ran out of disinfectant wipes. Australia ran out of eggs.

Somewhere in an alternate timeline, a historian is writing a thesis about this, titled The 2020 Panic and the Unnecessary Hoarding of Random Things.

March 2020 in Ontario

It started normally enough. People went to work, kids went to school, and bars were still full of people who had no idea their last beer at a table was about to happen for a long, long time.

By March 17th, Ontario had declared a state of emergency, schools had closed, and suddenly, “flattening the curve” wasn’t a pilates move—it was our entire existence.

The Month the Entire World Stopped

What made March 2020 so eerie was the fact that it was happening everywhere. The entire world synchronized its existential crisis.

Sports leagues shut down overnight. The NHL, NBA, Premier League—gone. The Olympics? Postponed. Broadway? Dark. Airports? Ghost towns.

With humans locked inside, wildlife roamed freely—goats took over Welsh villages, deer wandered through city centers, and coyotes loped down residential streets. In my town anyway, the coyotes claimed their spot, and still roam the streets.

Pollution plummeted as traffic disappeared and factories slowed, revealing blue skies over cities that hadn’t seen them in decades. Also, it turns out, we could be just as productive in sweatpants.

Restaurants shut down, workplaces went remote, and “social distancing” became the phrase of the month. Meanwhile, some businesses—like the LCBO and cannabis shops—were declared essential, ensuring that Ontario would endure lockdowns with a solid buzz.

During the pandemic, global anxiety and depression rates went up by 25%. Antidepressant prescriptions spiked, which then led to shortages, which then led to more anxiety.

And then, just when we thought, Okay, this is bad, but surely it’ll be fine by summer, we were introduced to the most soul-crushing phrase of 2020: two more weeks.

March 2020 was the start of a years-long, surreal chapter—one that none of us saw coming; a blur of homemade masks, Tiger King, and ZOOM meetings.

What Was Essential Where

Different countries had different definitions of what counted as essential during lockdown.

• France: You could still get fresh bread, because mon dieu.
• Germany: Hardware stores stayed open. Germans would not be denied home perfection.
• United States: In some states, gun stores were closed. In others, they were deemed essential for self-protection. Nothing obliterates a virus like shooting it in the face.
• South Korea: Schools never fully closed. Meanwhile, Ontario parents were Googling “how to homeschool in a zombie apocalypse”
• Belgium: Fry shops (friteries) remained open, highlighting the cultural importance of fries.

Belgium is now my spirit country. In hindsight, what was deemed essential wasn't what would keep us alive - it was what would keep us sane.

Death

During the worst of the pandemic, hospitals were sealed off, and with them, the final moments of thousands. Loved ones couldn’t visit, hold hands, or say goodbye—only nurses, exhausted and armoured in PPE, stood at the bedsides with the dying. Some died from COVID itself, while others died because hospitals were overwhelmed, their cancer diagnoses delayed, their treatments postponed.

Funerals became lonely affairs, stripped of the rituals that help us grieve—mourners forced to watch from screens or stand apart in near-empty cemeteries.

Aunt Jean was 106 when she died during COVID.

The lonely deaths and solitary grieving left a mark on us. In us.

The one thing that united the entire world—the COVID pandemic—was also the thing that forced us into almost complete isolation from one another. For the first time in history, nearly every person on the planet shared the same crisis.

It’s 2025 now. I’m almost out of that batch of syrup.

Which means soon, I’ll be back outside, collecting sap, feeding the fire, boiling it all down. I should be anxiety free this time but I'm not.

The world isn’t on the brink of shutting down—it’s shifting. Not with lockdowns or press conferences, but in quieter ways that make you pause mid-step and wonder if something is shifting underneath.

We got through COVID because of the vaccine. We got the vaccine so quickly because, for once, the influential people in the world had no choice but to work together. Scientists, researchers, doctors and leaders set aside borders, politics, and egos to share breakthroughs. Not because they wanted to, but because they had to.

It wasn’t power, diplomacy, or goodwill that made it happen—it was survival. A raw, human instinct to keep ourselves and the people we love alive.

March 2020 taught us this: the world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper—it ends in a frantic search for yeast and a lot of long hair. Let's hope we didn't grow it just to hang ourselves with it 5 years later.