They silenced the Citadel gun in Halifax last Friday.

That seems like what they do at the end of a siege, but this feels more like the beginning.

Citadel Hill looms over downtown Halifax. The star-shaped Citadel was built back in 1749, with its massive stone walls and its surrounding defensive ditch, to protect the harbour and the city.

The Citadel Noon Gun is an acoustic staple of Halifax life. Every day since 1857, Christmas Day notwithstanding, gunners dressed in the pillbox hats and the short tunic uniforms of the 1869 3rd Brigade Royal Artillery have marched to the wall and, with much ceremony, primed, loaded and fired the muzzleloading, twelve-pounder cannon.

If you’re new to Halifax, it’s a shock the first few times you hear it. But there comes a day when you stifle a condescending smile as tourists flinch at the boom to which you barely given a passing thought. That’s when you know you’ve settled in Halifax.

They say the noon gun was fired to give sailors in the harbour a reference to set their timepieces. Nowadays, the gun is part of the subconscious pulse of life in Halifax — a pulse notable, surprisingly, in its absence.

The Citadel is closed. It’ll stay that way for a while, with the same white paper announcement on its door that graces most of the businesses up and down the main strips of Halifax. And the next town. And the next province.

Across the country, people are recovering from the initial shock of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic to find that their worlds have changed in subtle but significant and unforeseen ways. Things long taken for granted are not there anymore, and the silence of their absence, from coast to coast, from city to city, is unexpectedly loud.

The muting of the Noon Gun is not the most calamitous thing to happen; truth be told, it’s quite far down that ladder. Haligonians don’t visit the Citadel on the regular, and it’s low season for tourism. But it is a part of the pulse of the city.

Yes, runners still test their mettle running up and down the Hill, and yes, people walk their dogs around the perimeter road. And people still acknowledge each other as they pass.

But it’s a different kind of greeting now. A smile that dies a little too quickly on the lips. Eyes that meet, then quickly cast downward or sideways. A subconscious gauge of distance and sometimes, a subtle change of direction.

These little reactions, the kind that usually go unnoticed, are all the more visible for the subtle absences around them. In the same way that the emptiness of a space is emphasized by a single person; that black is accentuated by a single stroke of light.

The Noon Gun — the absence of it — speaks volumes about the way things have changed.

In Toronto, a cold wind often rushes from the lake up through the Bay Street corridor. On a given weekday, especially if you work there, it can seem like the centre of the universe: bright, bustling and full of activity. Brokers, bankers and consultants march their way up from Union Station, coffee in one hand, cellphone in the other. Taxis, cars and buses compete for limited street space while pedestrians dart between.

Now the streets are mostly empty — the wind tugs at no one’s jackets or skirts, and the corridor at the centre of the universe has morphed, for a time, into one, big empty cubicle, sanitized and austere and eerily silent.

Out east, in The Beach neighbourhood, runners, cyclists and dog-walkers all share the boardwalk along Lake Ontario. The dogs have always been the catalyst for social interaction. People stop and coo over strangers’ pets while owners smile and nod and answer the usual questions.

“How old is your pup? Aww, she’s so cute! What kind of dog is she?”

But those chats have ceased. Now, when two dog walkers see each other, they shorten their leashes, avert their eyes and try to convince their bewildered pooches to ignore everyone else.

More than 3,000 kilometres away to the west, on a rainy spring day in downtown Edmonton, the spot where the hopes of hockey fans have lived for the past three-plus seasons sits empty.

Weeks ago, Oilers stars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were wowing crowds at Rogers Place; now the arena lies dormant in the centre of the city, like a sleeping giant.

Nowhere to be seen is the mass of orange and blue jerseys that would normally have made the pilgrimage through downtown to the arena to roar for this city’s team.

With the National Hockey League season suspended, there are empty streets on game night and dreams have been put on hold for fans who have seen so much Stanley Cup history.

This could have been The Year, after all…

On the West Coast, the North Shore mountains smile down upon the city of Vancouver. They are the first thing you notice when you move here, and the first thing you miss when you leave.

In the winter and early spring, rain in the city of Vancouver means snow on the mountains. When the weather clears, the whole tableau is visible from the city — including a bright, sharp line across the mountains where the elevation turns rain to snow.

Those crisp March mornings are what skiers dream about all year, perfect days for spring skiing.

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On any one of Vancouver’s three local ski hills — Cypress Mountain, Grouse Mountain or Mount Seymour — March is when soon-to-be sunburned winter enthusiasts spend their days making the most of the last-minute winter window.

They take in the views of the city while coasting down the slopes before spring finishes off the snow and the rocks beneath it once again poke through the runs.

Those ski hills are elevated ghost towns now, though. The rain falls, the trees are covered in snow, but there is no trace of human activity there. No cars drive up to the entrance of trailheads, no lifts ferry tourists and North America’s largest aerial tram sits dormant at the base of one of Vancouver’s urban mountains.

Down at sea level in Vancouver, one of the surefire heralds of spring, while much of rest of the country remains covered in snow, is the return of running groups.

Rain or shine, you can’t miss them in their brightly coloured running shoes: On the streets, along the seawall, across the iconic Lions Gate Bridge.

But in the past week, those groups have largely been dismantled — meaning, for now, runners have to train solo.

“I got to the top of the UBC hill Saturday. You can look in four directions — can’t see a car or person anywhere,” said Rod Waterlow, 82, who was the oldest qualified entrant in this year’s Boston Marathon. The event has now been postponed until September.

But he has no plans to veer from his training schedule — even if it means going it alone.

“We’re all going to have to rise to it.”

Things are changing, and things will continue to change. But even in the most dire of times, not all things that change are bad.

In China, South Korea, Italy, and the U.K. recent satellite images are showing significantly less industrial emission pollution compared to the same time last year.

In Spain and in Italy, neighbours in isolation sing and play music to each other from their balconies.

In Vancouver, there is a nightly round of applause from downtown balconies for their health-care workers.

Across the continent, and around the world, people are asking the question, many for the first time in what feels like ages: “What could I do for someone else?”

Back in Hacketts Cove, N.S., just outside Halifax, a small, red house sits on a hill overlooking an ocean cove. Sun breaks through low, scudding clouds and lights up the water, and a flock of robins swoops down to land on the back lawn.

Begging attention, they chatter loudly, holding court, pecking in the grass for food only they can see. The back lawn party goes on for ages, until Tucker, the neighbourhood cat, a longhaired ginger, comes by on his daily patrol. He sees the birds and his tail twitches and he sinks almost to his belly in the grass.

The robins, alarmed, raucously take flight and Tucker uncoils easily from his crouch and continues his rounds.

He doesn’t try to catch any. He never does.

Many things have changed in the past few weeks. But not all of them. And not forever.

With files from Tanis Fowler, Ted Fraser, Kieran Leavitt, Wanyee Li, Alex McKeen, Jeremy Nuttall, Douglas Quan

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