When it became clear that offices were closing and everyone had to work from home, it was time to fill the trunk with groceries, gin and tonic and head north to my little piece of heaven on Stoney Lake in the Kawarthas, two hours North-East of Toronto.

This is the quietest time of year at the lake, the thinning ice too unpredictable for skidooing and too early for boating. Before the cottagers, when there’s just a handful of permanent residents up here, joined this past week by a few families who’ve brought their kids for these weeks of imposed “social distancing.”

I love watching spring arrive at the lake. Each day the sun rising earlier to find a little more open water along the shore. Shrinking patches of old snow in the woods. The whitetail deer retreating into their forest. The honking geese coming home. Magic time.

Social distancing is not so bad if you’re lucky to be in a beautiful place. But despite email, Facebook, Twitter, Zoom calls, satellite TV and precious CBC Radio, I miss the face-to-face camaraderie of the office, the touch of friends. The coffee machine. We’re social animals. We need each other.

I work in the independent documentary film community, which has always been a kind of extended family — filmmakers, broadcasters, distributors, across the country and around the world. We know each other.

So the postponement of Toronto’s annual Hot Docs Film Festival next month, and similar events in Copenhagen and La Rochelle, France, has left a huge void. These are the places where we share a glass of wine, catch up on gossip and family stories, pitch new projects and try to sell our just completed films.

It’s an international family of people who really are trying, each in their own way, to make the world a better place, while also making a buck. Suddenly those face-to-face meetings have evaporated. And while we try, it’s impossible to re-create them over the phone or online. The excitement is missing, the eye contact, the smile.

But as the days of self-isolation turn to double digits, something magical seems to be happening. Physical distancing has encouraged an unexpected type of social cohesion. We’re sharing not just information, but feelings. Fears and intimacies we’d normally keep inside. And the lovely chance encounters with neighbours walking their dogs or kids of all ages biking down the centre of empty streets, is freeing.

What’s been created during this absence of human touch is a nurturing of compassion. As we’ve learned from history, strife opens hearts. Let’s use this physical distancing, this debilitating worry and fear as a way to ignite a fresh start — with one another and with our planet.

The wise Margaret Atwood said it best the other day on a podcast: “Let’s think of it as a reset button. It gives us time to ponder what sort of world we want to be living in on the other side of this.”

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