ONE COVID MORNING
When the Covid Pandemic of 2020 hit in March of this year, those of us who find our energy on the ocean waters felt the impact of that global reality in an instant. A large group of us paddle in big canoes many times a week, and we’ve done so for over 20 years. The demands of “social distancing” meant that we could no longer paddle in our big canoes. We were simply too close together in those canoes we know so well. Frequently gathering for coffee helped, but somehow it just didn’t satisfy the way our paddling together in those big canoes did. For months we found ourselves landlocked and we could all feel the effects. We missed our time on the water together. It was, and is, our way of life here on the Sunshine Coast.
But as the spring and summer provided a mercifully pleasant condition for the Sunshine Coast, we found the joy of paddling on the ocean in our kayaks and individual canoes. We were back on the water again, appropriately socially distanced, and it felt good. Every few days someone would “call a paddle” and those that could would show up, and as a fleet we’d explore our familiar paddling haunts.
One such paddle happened late in August. We’d launched at about 7:00AM and a dozen kayaks and a small canoe made their way to the far side of Keats Island. For that relatively short period of time, we escaped the shores of Gibsons and we escaped the oppressive threat of pandemic. Our paddling is our medicine, both physical and mental, and on this morning of the pandemic, it was just what the doctor ordered. We got there even before the sun had showed its face over the ridge on Bowen Island. And it was there, relaxed at slack tide, that we drifted, relaxed, breathed in the fresh morning air and waited. I don’t know what we were waiting for, we just waited. We were just there on the mirror of ocean water, letting our thoughts wander in a positive direction. For a few minutes at least, the threats of an invisible pandemic were far away.
So many of my paintings are found from the seat of a canoe, and so too this one. When the days grow shorter, cooler and wetter, I know we’ll all look back to mornings like this when we all escaped together. We do it often, this group of friends bound together by the magical energy of canoes and kayaks. This painting simply represents for all of us “One Covid Morning”.
