“I had a great pregnancy up until that point, but I knew those cramps were different,” Samantha remembers. “I was in labour. Six weeks early."

It happened on a November day. Anthony had just come back from a concert when he started feeling ill. At first, he felt extremely sick to his stomach and then he started noticing that something was wrong with his eyes.

When Kevin’s dog began spending more and more time with him, he started wondering if his cancer might be back. “I am friends with Temple Grandin, an animal behaviourist, and have learned a lot from her over the years,” Kevin explains. “I knew something wasn’t right.”

Her admission to the hospital on September 25, 2020 is one of the last things Paula remembers. After that, she can only recall bizarre and vivid nightmares until, eventually, she remembers waking up in the Niagara Falls Intensive Care Unit (ICU) - two months later.

“It all began with my wife,” Nick explains. “She started getting sick while we were camping. She was feeling really awful, and then as soon as we got home, our son Eli started showing symptoms as well.”