Just over a year ago, when COVID-19 officially took over the city, province, and country, my wife and I packed the car to the brim, tossed our two small kids in the back — figuratively — and headed to her family cottage to wait out the unknown.

We did this before anyone in government, or any other official place, told people not to overwhelm cottage country. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but once there, turning back hardly seemed like the right thing either.

For the next seven weeks we lived in tandem with my sister-in-law’s family of five, a tightly-knit bubble at the end of a long gravel road consisting of four parents in their mid-to-late 30s, five children under the age of seven, and one dog too old to care about social distancing.

It was a strange and beautiful time for our families. Like everyone else, we were scared, worried, and unsure of what was to come. My wife didn’t leave the property for six weeks.

I, on the other hand, started leaving every day.

Trying to get through a work day with the internet service we had was simply impossible. The highest speed our provider could deliver was 5 mega bytes per second (Mbps), but based on speed tests and, well, actual use, it seemed to be dripping in at about 2 Mbps max.

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