As Canadians, we’re used to long winters and knowing when it’s best to stay inside because the roads are icy and blocked with snow. We enjoyed a mild winter this year, but the global COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly become a greater danger to our country than any blizzard or ice storm we’ve ever seen.

Despite the most urgent warnings from our doctors and health experts, some Canadians seem to have mistaken the pandemic for a snow day. Extra time off, play dates and get-togethers. But, in the past week, it’s become clear that what we are facing is the Big One and, to get through it, Canada has wisely gone into a state of hibernation.

COVID-19 has abruptly closed our schools and businesses and made many of our outdoor spaces into an unacceptable risk. But unlike the winter storms we’ve faced in the past, COVID-19 is a blizzard we cannot see with our eyes — which makes it all the more dangerous

Because we cannot see it like driving snow, it might be easy to believe that the danger isn’t there. But the danger is real, and the stormfront is upon us. The early spring arrival of the virus seems especially cruel in Canada and the fact that our hibernation period must begin as the weather warms up feels like an unnatural contradiction. But whether we’re facing 40 inches of heavy snow or the new threat posed by COVID-19, the only way to get through a winter storm is to recognize the danger, hunker down and dig out when the time is right.

In California and warmer parts of North America, grizzly bears don’t have to hibernate. But when northern winds begin to blow cold, the Canadian grizzly goes into hibernation for five to seven months.

Hopefully Canada’s national hibernation won’t be as long but, at this point, we know we are looking at a situation of months and not weeks. Instinctively sensing a change in the air, Canadian grizzly bears prepare a den and pack on the pounds in anticipation of the austerity of winter. In every province, Canadians are engaged in a similar pattern of preparation as we stock up on supplies and ready our homes for a period of isolation essential to our survival.

The Canadian Public Health Association recently likened our nation-wide stay-at-home order to that of a bear at the beginning of winter, writing “When a bear goes into hibernation, they do it for the health of their community and themselves… Hibernation slows the spread of disease and viruses among other animals during a season when immune systems are lowered, and energy is limited.”

But there is also a mental health component to hibernation, as the CPHA put it last week: “When it is time for hibernation, the bear can finally relax. All the stress of finding food, territory and a mate disappears. The bear believes they have done enough and trust in themselves.”

Like many of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents during the Second World War, Canadians are now being asked to accept unprecedented disruptions to their daily lives in order to overcome an urgent global challenge. The good news is that our long experience with the world’s harshest winters means Canadians have a distinct advantage in the new challenge of home-quarantine and social-isolation. This year, we’ll all be putting our winter hibernation skills to the test and we’ll be doing it to protect ourselves, our families and our communities.

For the grizzly bears of Canada, the period of winter isolation also plays a vital role in the animals’ reproduction cycle and the continuation of the species as a whole. For Canadians beginning the hard winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is comfort to be taken in the example of the great grizzly.

Even though its always hard to imagine in deepest winter, the thaw will come. It always does. The raging storm of this pandemic will pass. But until then we’ll have to embrace hibernation and, like our animal friends, bide our time until it’s once again safe to emerge from our dens.

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