Alec de Rham sat with his back to a small stone obelisk which marks the “international border”. He and his wife met a girl they hadn't seen in ten weeks.

Hannah Smith traveled to the border from Vancouver, British Columbia, by bus and bicycle, to see her boyfriend Jabree Robinson, of Bellingham, Washington.

And next to a large white arch that symbolizes friendship between Canadians and Americans, Lois England and Ian Hendon embraced enthusiastically during a meeting hours after the longest separation in their three years together.

Families, couples and friends separated for weeks by the coronavirus-driven closure of the U.S.-Canada border arrive at Peace Arch Park, a border oasis where they can meet, touch and hug .

The park covers 17 hectares of manicured land, planted with flowers, cedars and alders, stretching from Blaine, Washington to Surrey, British Columbia, on the eastern edge of a border 6,146 kilometers (3,987 miles) long. In the park, visitors can move freely, crossing from one side of the border to the other, without the need to present a passport.

Many picnics and sometimes weddings take place in the park. It is currently one of the few places on the northern border of the United States where people separated by the border closure can see each other.

Authorities closed the park in mid-March due to the coronavirus. The US side reopened in early May, when Washington state Governor Jay Inslee lifted some restrictions on people's movement. The Canadian side was reopened two weeks ago.

England, of Sumas, Washington, said she cried when Hendon called her to tell her the news and the two planned the meeting.

England says she and Hendon are following recommendations to keep their distance, but at no point did they think about staying six feet apart when they saw each other.

“I was very depressed by the separation. “It’s a big relief,” she said.

It normally takes around 40 minutes from England to get to Hendon's home in Surrey. They have both seen each other at least once a week since meeting online three years ago. Hendon, who is an electrician, has his hands full during the pandemic, while England is spending most of the quarantine with his daughter and mother, who live nearby.

The couple chats on Skype almost every morning, but England missed Hendon so much that she tried to enter Canada a few weeks ago by presenting herself as an “essential” visitor, a category reserved for doctors, to truck drivers and airline staff. Canadian authorities did not allow him entry.

One meeting was not enough. The next day they came back and had a barbecue.

A half-hour drive east, other families are in an area where there are parallel roads on either side of a ditch that represents the border. People can sit on chairs and chat without crossing the road. Touch is more complicated.

Tim and Kris Browning thought it would be too difficult to talk without touching. Kris lives north of the border in Abbotsford, where she works in a hospital kitchen. Tim lives in the south where he is an electrician on a farm. They married in 2014 after meeting online and the virus is delaying Tim's paperwork to move to Canada.

Chatting separated by the gutter and a small barrier, or in a neighboring raspberry grove, owned by Tim's boss, is however now commonplace. Something much better than talking on the phone, even if it's on video, they say.

“It’s nice to see all these families. Everyone is doing great,” said Tim, who usually spends three days a week with Kris and their two children in Canada. “A Border Patrol agent came up to me and said, 'Why don't you hug your wife? Hug her!”.-