‘What am I doing with life?' - How Covid in Canada gave Kevin Kilbane the answer

Irish Daily Mirror

2 days ago

Friday March 13, 2020: The date stamped on the outbound line of Kevin Kilbane's airline ticket.
Little did he know that, for the next 18 months anyway, his flight to Toronto would be a one-way journey.
Up to this point, there had been the outline of a plan:
Kilbane, capped 110 times for Ireland, would eventually settle in Canada with his fiancée Brianne Delcourt. The pair had met a year earlier on ITV's Dancing On Ice.
They would get married in Ireland. The date had been set. September 4 of that year.
But the big move? That would happen a year or two down the line.
And then, days after his trans-Atlantic trip, the whole world shut down.
'We've all got our story to tell from Covid,' says Kilbane, recalling his own remarkable tale.
'I'll never forget the date. I arrived in Canada on Friday the 13th of March. Toronto Airport closed down, I think, on the 14th or 15th.
'It basically shut the weekend after I arrived. Every airport across the world was closing down across the course of that week.'
Suddenly, the former Preston, Everton and Sunderland man was trapped by the pandemic. For 18 months, he was unable to leave Canada.
'To get on a flight I had to get vaccinated,' replies Kilbane, 'but I couldn't get vaccinated because I wasn't a citizen here, I wasn't a resident.
'So I couldn't get the vaccine, which I needed to fly back.'
Plans were moved forward. Kilbane and Brianne bought a house together, they got married in Canada, and Brianne, whose daughter Gracie was three at the time, fell pregnant.
From feeling trapped, he soon came to realise that he had, in fact, been freed by this once-in-a-generation event.
Life on the other side of the Atlantic had been spinning out of control. But unable to get a work permit in Canada, Kilbane was forced to take stock.
'I didn't get residency until about October 2021, so I was in the country for 18 months, and I wasn't allowed to work for well over a year,' he says.
'I was stuck, I couldn't fly back. It was over a year down the line and still wasn't able to get vaccinated.
'I couldn't get a doctor because I wasn't a resident, I couldn't get a health card here, and off the back of it I couldn't get a work permit.
'So I wasn't able to work until literally on the eve of the Euros, which were delayed because of Covid. I'm talking days; one or two days, June 2021.
'That's the first bit of (punditry) work I did over here (with Canadian TV channel, TSN). I was only able to get a work permit because I had to push certain things.
'Even off the back of that, I still didn't get residency until October or November, another few months after that.
'It was 18 months before I had residency and 15 months before I was able to work.
'During that time it was a nightmare in terms of, what am I going to do and how am I going to get work and what am I going to be able to do?
'I couldn't get work, I couldn't fly home, I couldn't do anything. It was just a crazy time for me.
'But it certainly helped me to settle down, it helped me almost to smell the roses in many respects. It definitely helped me to calm down a little bit and not go chasing stuff.
'Even when I was probably speaking to you over the years, you would have been like, Jesus Christ, you are everywhere.
'I was basing myself in Dublin at that time and I always felt that was where I was going to be, I was going to be in Ireland permanently.
'And if I needed to fly back to the UK or whatever, I'd get on a flight and go back.
'I felt like I was constantly at the BBC, I was in Manchester, I was in Dublin, I was doing the Virgin Media stuff, I was with the Off The Ball lads, and I constantly felt like I didn't have any time.
'I was constantly getting up at 4am to make a 5.30 flight, driving out of Kilmainham at whatever time.
'Then I bought my place in Castleknock and I felt like I was always racing to get on the M50, getting to the airport, running through the airport, getting on a flight, landing, working, flying back…
'I was sometimes doing that four times a week and I was like, what am I doing?
'Covid helped that. That's all I'll say. It calmed me down in so many ways.
'I just felt, where am I going? What am I doing with my life? Then everything took shape from there and I'm really thankful for everything.
'For me to be able to calm down was great, it was a great time for me.'
Kilbane, with two daughters in their early-20s living in England, is now the proud stepdad to Gracie (8), and dad to Olivia (4) and Keavy (3).
'It was Covid that changed it,' he says. 'The reality was, once we hit May or June (2020); look, we're kind of stuck and we are going to have to make a decision on what we are going to do.
'We knew what we were going to do eventually, so it just kind of brought everything forward a year or two for us.
'So it was an amazing time. However we are all going to judge Covid, and we've all got our story to tell from it. But I have no regrets. Absolutely not.
'You asked me at the start if I was nervous, and I was probably nervous for different reasons.
'Obviously I didn't want to be leaving my daughters in England, but they were at an age where they could understand to an extent what was happening.
'I kind of knew where I was going. Whether it was a year or two ahead of where I thought it was going to be, then so be it, because it was going to happen anyway.
'And now I couldn't be happier. Life is as hectic as it ever has been. Keavy here has just turned three, Olivia was four in February, she starts school in September.
'It's just crazy to think of where we were and what's happening now.
'Our eight-year-old, Gracie, we are racing around with her, taking her to all sports. My middle daughter, Olivia, has soccer tonight, so we are taking her there. We're full-on.
'There's the lack of sleep, as any father and mother knows. Every single day you are tired.
'My wife Briana and I, crazy stuff! It's great. Now that I'm approaching 50, I think I should be at the stage where I'm a middle-aged man who's enjoying a bit of sleep now.
'But I love it and I couldn't have wished for things to have gone as well as they have done.'