Like many during this current outbreak, Roy McLaren is holed up at home with his wife, ordering groceries online, catching up with his neighbours on the driveway from the government-mandated six feet separation and going for long drives in the countryside to witness the wildlife beginning to stir with the change in spring.

And like the rest of us, the Pilot Mound farmer is not immune to the anxiety and pressures of living through a global pandemic. He too has made sacrifices, missing friends and family, including at their recent wedding.

But McLaren is also quick to put our current situation into perspective. At 95 years old, Mclaren has seen, and vividly remembers, more of our history than most.

By age four, some of his earliest memories would be of the Great Depression when unemployment hit 25 percent, and the global GDP dropped 27 per cent.

"If you had a job for a dollar a day you were a lucky one," he explains. "People can't believe that now, but it's true. You could hire a man for five dollars a month plus board, and they were happy to get it because they had a roof over their head and three square meals."

Being born in 1925 puts him at the tender age of 14 when WWII broke out. He was forced to watch the older boys he admired ship off to war. Many, like his brother, made the ultimate sacrifice, never to return.

"Of course we were all kind of living in fear, my own little community suffered terribly with the young fellows going to war," he says. Within a half-mile from their farm, there were seven young men that left for war, two returned grievously wounded, three were killed. Another had their ship sunk but was rescued unscathed.

Those who remained at home were also tested, living under strict rationing on basic products like fuel, tires, meat, and sugar. "You couldn't just go to the store and buy your groceries," he says, adding as a child he especially remembers chocolate bars becoming a rare, prized commodity.

On his 37th birthday, the world would be pushed to the brink during the Cuban Missile Crisis. People collectively held their breath knowing what nuclear war could mean for the future of our planet.

Yet, whether it was a world war, global crisis, economic depression, or viral pandemic, McLaren says the only way to get through it together.

"In those days, everybody dug in, everybody produced and did the best they could," he says, reflecting on WWII.

He adds they didn't have as much time to reflect on their anxiety, "all the young people left the workforce to go to war, so the rest of us worked hard, of that there was no question, and we made due the best we could."

"There was no such thing as nine to five," he adds. "We just worked and worked. It was a hard time."

Compared to those days, he says they're enjoying relative comfort and peace. "I'm grateful for what we have, we're sitting pretty good," he says.

In the end, the most important lesson on surviving trying times is simply being a good neighbour.

"We were a lot more neighbourly at that time," he says, which upon further reflection allowed him to say, "it was a great place to live, a great time to live, I thought."

Even during the most desperate times, McLaren says the simplest pleasures remain true; fishing, being in nature, laughing with a good friend, music, and a deck of cards.

Living in quarantine in their Pilot Mound home, McLaren and his wife say they're still able to enjoy what's best in life.

"We're having a ball," he says emphatically and without a trace of irony.