No place like home right now for local senior snowbirds

Like a lot of Canadian snowbirds who pass the winter in Florida, Giovanni Cirelli and his wife, Josephine, were looking forward to returning to Montreal once most of the snow had melted.

They were supposed to fly home on April 10 with Air Canada, but the growing COVID -19 pandemic caused the Cirellis, who are both in their 70s, to revise those plans.

Now they’re flying back Monday to Montreal on a Delta Air Lines flight and they can’t wait to touch down on Canadian soil, even if it’s still under slushy snow.

“We’re anxious to get home, even if we have to self-isolate for 14 days,” said Giovanni, a 74-yearold resident of Vaudreuil-dorion for much of the year. “At least we’ll be in the confines of our own home. You want to be close to the people you love.”

Giovanni has been wintering in Florida for the past 11 years. He arrived there Jan.1, ready to spend the next 100 days soaking up the rays in sunny Fort Myers, but decided to cut the stay short after family members in Montreal urged him to come back in recent days due to the pandemic.

“With all the news we’re hearing, we just want to get out of here,” Giovanni said.

But getting a flight out of Florida on Air Canada seemed next to impossible.

“Oh, forget it,” Giovanni said. “Trying to get through to Air Canada, first of all, you can’t unless you plan to wait on the phone for eight or nine hours.”

Giovanni said he thought about driving back to Canada, but was worried he might get stopped at the border because his car has Florida license plates. After calling Canadian border services in Lacolle, Giovanni was reassured his plates should not be a problem.

“They also told me that given the circumstances, you’re better off getting out of there now,” he added.

Giovanni said he was not looking forward to the long drive if needed.

“What if we had a problem with the car?” he said. “I have driven back before, some 24 or 25 hours over two or three days, but it’s a haul.”

He said fears of the coronavirus has led to panic buying of certain products at stores in Fort Myers, as it has in Montreal.

“It really hit me when I went to the Costco store here,” he said. “The lineup to get to the cash went all the way to the meat department in the back. We are literally talking hours to get out. They had a limit on the amount of water you could take, two per customer. At least that. People are panic buying. If you buy 10 packs of toilet paper, may I ask what for? Why not give someone else a chance to get some.”

Giovanni added that no one was observing social distancing protocols in stores.

“All of a sudden ... it started to go a little nuts over here,” he said. “I heard it’s pretty bad back in Montreal, too.”

Giovanni and his wife are now glad to be heading home soon, even if it means losing the money on their Air Canada tickets for April 10.

“People are scrambling to get out now,” he said. “I’m 74 and my wife is 70. We don’t want to be hospitalized down here, even if we have insurance. You’re not at home. You just want to be home.”