Ian Richards had been enjoying his “golden years.”

He has a comfortable five-bedroom bungalow in Orillia, Ont., where he lives with his partner, Kelly, and her 16-year-old son Ethan. Richards’ grandson Justin, partner Teanna and their two children ages 3 and 6 also share the home.

Add to that Ian and Kelly’s two dogs, Innis and Gunner, a mix of Rottweiler and boxer.

Then suddenly COVID-19 came along and upended their cosy family life.

Now Richards, 73, isn’t sure where he’ll turn to support him and his family.

Richards has a $1,400 monthly mortgage payment, which is mostly covered by the $1,300 in total he receives a month from his Canada Pension Plan and Old Age pension.

In an effort to pay his other expenses — meals, hydro, gas bills, the maintenance of his car, food, his medications, etc., — he took on a part-time job at car rental company Enterprise in Barrie. He worked about 20 to 35 hours a week and earned $14 an hour shuttling customers and cars to other locations for rent or sale.

He was often required to travel with three or four other drivers to reach various pickup points for the vehicles. On March 16, Richards was in a car with fellow employees when a manager called and told them to turn around, return to the office, log out and go home.

Richards knew the direction from his manager was related to the COVID-19 outbreak, a respiratory ailment that has killed tens of thousands of people around the world.

Richards had a triple bypass operation years ago, is on heart medication and is considered high risk to be seriously ill if he contracts the virus. He took the order to go home seriously. He was already concerned about being in vehicles with three or four others, given the public health warnings about maintaining social distance to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.

At that moment, Richards joined the millions of Canadians who’ve lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19 and are now worried about paying their bills.

His bank has given him a one-month deferral on his mortgage, and the City of Orillia initially turned him down for a deferral on his property taxes, but he now has until June 30 to pay. He and Kelly, who has been out of work since November, are considering downsizing to one car from two, and he has stopped making extra payments on his line of credit for now. But he has no savings.

Richards applied for unemployment insurance and is considering applying for the federal government’s new relief fund that is set to pay $2,000 a month to Canadians left jobless by COVID-19. He’s not sure he’ll qualify and must wait to find out.

For now, much of his life is up in the air. He and his family, like many others in Canada, are facing tough decisions.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Richards, a retired engineer who was born in the U.K. and came to Canada in 1975. “These are supposed to be my golden years, but things aren’t so golden right now.”

The COVID-19 crisis is the latest turn his life has taken.

He worked as a project engineer for 14 years for a company that arranged tooling for Honda. He travelled a lot, including to Japan and all over the U.S., for his job. But in 2000, he suffered a stroke during heart surgery and sustained some permanent short- and midterm memory loss.

So, he had to retire — at age 54.

A few years later came a bitter divorce. He says he didn’t want a fight with his ex-wife so he agreed she could have two-thirds of their possessions.

He had to sell his house, then he moved to Orillia with his daughter, who has since moved on with her own life.

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In the intervening years, he took some time off to support his grandson with his new family and drove a school bus from 2012 to 2016. That year, Kelly and her son moved in as did Justin, 26, and his family. Justin, who is on reduced hours from his job with a cellphone company, and partner Teanna, a stay-at-home mom, pay about $700 a month in rent.

To make ends meet, Richards took the job at Enterprise four years ago.

His morning routine was to get up at 5:45 a.m., grab breakfast and leave his house at 7 a.m. for the 35-minute commute to work.

“I was really enjoying my job. I love driving and I like meeting people and talking to them,” Richards says.

When the order to go home came, Richards was relieved at first, thinking the company was taking proactive steps to curb the virus.

“But then I thought ‘oh dear, I’m not going to get paid,’” Richards recalls.

In uncertain economic times like this, Canadians are feeling a lot of anxiety that is based on a “fight or flight” instinct to do something to make their lives more stable, says Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at University of Toronto.

“Anxiety is being brought to life every day,” Joordens says. “The government is pumping out the (relief fund) but do we trust it — will we be OK in the end?”

Joordens says people like Richards should “do something, anything he can find to trim costs. Those things will make him feel better ... We also have to trust that things are going to get better, even though none of us know how this is going to play out in the end.”

Richards says he’s hopeful he’ll get his job back when the virus “blows over” but believes it will take about six months from now for life everywhere to return to normal.

“I hope I can see six months through and come out of this with everything intact,” Richards says.

Note: This story has been edited from a previously published version that said the City of Orillia denied Richards request for a deferral on his property taxes.