National Post (National Edition)
A GUIDE to LIVING INSIDE a day in the LIFE
How not to go stark-raving mad during the coronavirus lockdown
We’re still brushing our teeth, and other truths from our exclusive poll on how Canadians are spending their lockdown.
New ways of life are emerging in the average Canadian’s average day.
After weeks of pandemic survival, in which everything that had been in motion — school, work, life itself — seemed to wobble on its axis, there are signs of a new equilibrium.
It is reassuring, on the balance. Seeing life’s patterns go on, despite it all, lifts the spirits. It feels a bit like the middle section of the Beatles’ song A Day In The Life, when McCartney takes over singing from Lennon, and the mood flips from the melancholy apocalypse of John reading the news today, oh boy, to the trippy daydream of Paul’s personal domestic circumstances: “Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late.”
A Day In The Life continues in this bouncing merry rhythm until
John reads the news again. Days are like that now. We go to work but never leave the room, and only socialize on Zoom.
“We’re in a new abnormal,” said John Wright, a veteran Canadian pollster. “A lot of this is just going to stay.”
As a weekday, Thurs., April 23, 2020, was undistinguished, and more or less representative. Wright, who leads the DART & maru/Blue survey research team, helped the National Post compile data based on a random sampling of 1,530 people in an online panel that captured public attitudes and behaviour at that moment in time — a day in the life — of Canada during the great pandemic.
It began with that blissful instant of amnesia before awareness comes crashing, when life is nothing but cozy ignorance wrapped in blankets. As they woke up, most Canadians were not even immediately certain what day it was.
A majority of Canadians say they are losing track of the days, from 52 per cent in Quebec up to 60 per cent in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
Then there was that newly familiar, fleeting sensation of doom. The average Canadian, by a slim majority, believes that, locally, things are going to get worse before they get better. So, even if we are going to get dressed, there is no need to get dressed up.
Self-care is important, though, so the average Canadian’s teeth were brushed. Showering and bathing habits have remained pretty close to constant, with seven per cent upping the frequency, perhaps, for a bit of luxury, and 13 per cent dropping the frequency, which is none of your business. Either way, we are getting dressed like always, just more comfortably.
As for things to do, the average Canadian was working from home and feeling pretty good about it. “It’s fine,” was the most common appraisal, at 38 per cent, and a lot more people love it than hate it, enough to want to keep doing it more, even after the crisis. The most common complaint was of poor seating.
About a third of Canadians went grocery shopping on this day, and 73 per cent said they felt safe doing so, “so long as it is not too crowded.”
There were outliers among them. It is not a common attitude here, but fully 15 per cent of Canadians believe “a firearm would provide me a sense of security when completing essential errands during COVID-19.”
The rest made do with masks, not the medical-grade ones to keep the virus out, but the makeshift ones to keep your own possible virus in. Ideally, they were something cool, like a bandana tied around the face in the manner of an oldtimey Western bandit, or the niqab, which has never before enjoyed such positive popular attention.
Grocery shopping happens these days by foot, by car or by bicycle, because taking public transit is all but completely out. At the high end, only one in 20 British Columbians had taken public transit, and one in 100 Quebecers at the low.
Besides grocery shopping, there were also chores to do. Canadians say they are getting more done around the house, as high as 73 per cent in Quebec, and as low as 60 per cent in Ontario. As housework often is, pandemic housework has been an emotional journey for the average Canadian, who has taken frustrations out on the vacuum, the dishes and the laundry, all while feeling isolated (47 per cent), anxious (42 per cent), bored (38 per cent), frustrated (37 per cent), stressed about finances (57 per cent) and, most of all, worried about catching the coronavirus (61 per cent).
By the end of all that, the place looked great and the socks were clean, but the average Canadian needed a bit of fresh air. Fewer than a third of Canadians are exercising at home. The go-to pandemic workout for the masses remains the walk. Over the course of the day on Thurs., April 23, a little over two hours would be spent outside, which is sure to increase as the weather is still turning, and still occasionally cold and wet.
Walking outside is a solitary activity these days (80 per cent of people have said they do not feel safe in large crowds, which is quite correct, according to public health officials) and it inclines people to deep reflection. So, it is in this state of mind that people have come to believe, as 75 per cent of average Canadians say they now do, that “life will never
be the same, after the virus.” It depends what you mean by “the same,” though. Life still makes you hungry for lunch, for example. So, by the time the sun was high on this average day, the Canadians’ priorities had turned away from existential dread toward the home kitchen.
This is where much of the change in this country has happened. The average Canadian has been spending more time in the kitchen, cooking far more often, estimating more than 16 meals made at home in the past week, which averages to a little more than two a day. That, therefore, leaves a lot of room for the average Canadian’s new hobby of constant snacking.
The contents of the fridge were not a surprise on this day. The average Canadian has been neurotically looking in the fridge for days since the last shopping expedition, occasionally eating a pickle right out of the jar. Once in a while, the average Canadian checks on the deterioration of the fresh produce and curses the wasted greenery, and at other times plans out a schedule of dishes with whatever remains, sometimes even discovering serendipitous ethnic mash-ups like the kimchi omelette.
Food has been a doit-yourself enterprise. The average Canadian reported just shy of one full meal per week delivered to their home, and less frequent orders of take-out and drive-through.
Curiously, there was a reported average of 0.3 meals eaten at somebody else’s house, which would seem to violate restrictions in places that had not already approved “cohort” households, as in Alberta, or multi-household “bubbles,” as in New Brunswick.
In the afternoon, the average Canadian made a few phone calls to mom or dad, aunt, uncle or grandparents. A third of Canadians are being especially nice by staying in touch more with non-immediate family, meaning in other households.
At the supper hour, there was the traditional banging of the pots or pans outside, or other musical appreciations of health workers, which once brought a tear to the eye but the ritual has lately seen enthusiasm fade.
Then, after dinner, with plenty of wine as required — just two per cent of Canadians had difficulties accessing alcohol this day: good job everybody — the average Canadian hit the couch, favouring broadcast television over streamed content, but watching a bunch of both. The choice was most commonly for a comedy, slightly less for action and drama, a bit less for news and documentaries, thrillers and classics, quite a bit less for reality and contest shows, and a piddling seven per cent for sports, mainly because the offerings are classic reruns.
And then it was time to hop back into bed, just like John Lennon, to read the news today, oh boy, and see if Donald Trump got up to anything crazy or whether Kim Jong-un is really dead. Then off to sleep, to the psychedelic world of pandemic dreams, before doing it all again tomorrow.
A pandemic poll proves nothing is average for any of us just now Joe Brean