Running to relax, reliving the ’60s with Gordon Lightfoot
The Spectator is speaking to people from various walks of life to find out how they are dealing with isolation and other challenges during the pandemic
Every morning, McMaster University president David Farrar takes his cup of coffee upstairs to his home office to start a full day of Zoom meetings.
“My day is very full of Post-Itsized people on computer screens,” he said.
Despite the challenges of working from home, Farrar said it has helped him connect on a different level with his colleagues.
“You get to see a different side of people when you see them working from home. You hear their dog barking in the background,” he said. “I’ve gotten to know different people at the university, and I’ve gotten to know people that I already knew in different ways.
Outside of work, Farrar has been getting back into running, cooking meals with his wife, reading a Gordon Lightfoot biography and watching documentaries on Netflix. In an interview with the Spec, Farrar discusses his strategies for staying healthy and connecting with others while physically distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q: What are you doing to stay positive and/or calm your fears?
A: I am so focused on the university that my well-being is in many ways driven by the fact that I’m probably working as many or more hours than I did before. The way in which I work is very different, but my days are so full and I’m so busy that it just keeps me going.
Q: What are your strategies for coping with isolation?
A: I’ve continued my workout regime and I’ve stuck a run back in. Running is very calming for me. That is one of the things that’s been helping me deal with this. One of the things I’m focusing on now is getting enough exercise in my daily routine so that I sleep better at night. There are more things to think about, and the complexity of the world that we’ve ended up in interrupts your sleep.
Q: If you have kids, what are you doing to keep them happy and stimulated?
A: My children are grown and they live in cities a ways from here. My daughter has a boy who is now coming up to four years old. That’s been a hard part because I’m used to visiting both my son and my daughter, and that doesn’t happen anymore right now. Face Time has been a good intervention in that regard. That way I get to see my grandson.
Q: How are you staying connected with others?
A: My family’s very small: my two children and my partner, Susan. Susan and I have not spent as much time together in a number of years, so that has been enjoyable. With my son and daughter, we’ve been using Face Time. That technology allows you to stay connected with your family, but you don’t get the same emotional responses that you do when you’re dealing with somebody face to face. That may be a part of what wakes me up in the middle of the night as well.
Q: Reading recommendations?
A: I’m a product of the ’60s, so I was reading a Gordon Lightfoot biography. It was fun to read about his life when he was growing up. I experienced him in the ’60s before his international fame. That’s the part of it that I was more interested in — his early life and how his career was shaped.
Q: Video recommendations (movies, series etc.)?
A: I’m missing baseball, so I watched the Ken Burns documentary, “Baseball.” He’s hugely detailed in the way he goes through it. I also watched the restored film showing the major events of World War II on Netflix. I then found myself watching an episode of “Tiger King,” which convinced me that the world is even stranger that I thought it.
Q: Podcast recommendations?
Not a lot. The day job keeps me pretty busy. The one thing that Susan has gotten me addicted to is daily press conferences from Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, on what’s playing out in New York. They are truly amazing.
Q: What message would you like to give the community?
A: Hamilton is an amazing place and the university is really starting to come of age. I know that the pandemic may make things right now feel like the future doesn’t hold much promise, but I really do feel like the city’s future is going to be very bright. It’s part of the reason I came to McMaster. I hope that the country and the region will learn its lesson around caring for its population and supporting its people.