As true romantics know, love will always prevail. After nearly one year(!) of being confined in close quarters, celebrating the labours of love may come as a challenge for some. Whether it’s spent virtually, with friends, or that special someone, at least we can guarantee there’ll be no reservation required. To help you get into the spirit of Cupid, we spoke to 8 Canadian creatives on how they’re making this particular day special from any other.
Anna & Luis
“On Valentine’s Day of last year, we were in Florence, staying in a bright-yellow apartment overlooking a romantic piazza. Every day of this trip was an equal celebration of our love, so on the day designated to lovers, we stuck to our routine of making ourselves dinner with fresh, market pasta and drinking cheap, but delicious Italian wine.
“While this Valentine’s Day will certainly pale in comparison to the grandeur of last year’s celebration, and we certainly (always) wish we were in Italy, we are lucky to be a couple that thrives on our togetherness. We’ve celebrated most holidays this year by ourselves, but together.
“Despite being confined in close quarters for practically a year, not for a day have we wished to be apart—well, not further apart than in separate rooms anyway. However, when these special days come along, it’s challenging to set them apart from the rest. What works in our favour, is that we don’t often order food and spend the day lounging. Cherubic as we both might look, we do more than just lounge around on beds of clouds and silk all day! So, on this Valentine’s Day, we’ll take it easy for a change. Order our favourite pizza from Pizza e Pazzi paired with the ever-affordable and wonderfully-mediocre Spumante Bambino, and play Nintendo Switch until our eyes can’t take any more. And to stay sane, we’ll tell ourselves that next year we’ll get to dress up.”
Rebecca & Pat
“Valentines Day this year will be spent similarly to how we spend most holidays—on the couch with some takeout and a bottle of wine! We’re pretty low-key people and mostly just enjoy sitting around and chatting, so we don’t feel too fussed to make it a big ordeal. Our anniversary actually falls on the 14th as well (8 years together woot!), so who knows, we may crawl out of our sweatsuits and into some real clothes for the occasion, but the jury is still out on that one.”
Saty & Pratha
“For Saty and I, being locked up together during the pandemic hasn’t been all that different from our pre-covid life—whether prepping, shooting, doing post-production, flying somewhere, planting things, etc., we were pretty much a foot apart all day anyway. To be frank, Neither of us cares at all about Valentine’s Day, it’s a bit of a tense ‘holiday’, competing for reservations and outwardly showing a couple’s love. However, we do end up celebrating on the 14th because it also happens to be my birthday.
Unlike Saty, who prefers as non-eventful a day as possible on his, I’m all-in for birthdays. And since mine falls within the coldest Canadian month, we typically squeeze in a trip with friends to any city that is even marginally warmer. Obviously, that’s not happening this year. So, our big grandiose plan this year is to make some drinks, build a fire and jump on a FaceTime with our good friends and hammer out the specifics of a France to Italy road trip we’ve been planning for years. We might not know when it’ll actually come to fruition, but the act of planning it feels like just the right amount of escapism right now.”
Sophie & Kathleen
Photography by Brittany Carmichael
“Our whole relationship has been in quarantine so we’ll stick to what we know: takeout, sex and The Bachelor.”