Yes, it’s everyone’s favorite time of the year — time for the annual Ingram Christmas Letter! I know that you’re as excited as I am 🙂 I’ve been doing this now for about a quarter of a century, I think. And yes, I know sometimes it feels like longer than that (imagine how I feel). I’ve been pulling together all the previous versions and publishing them as blog posts at mathewingram.com/work, but since we’ve moved several times, and I’ve switched internet providers and computers multiple times, piecing those old letters together was harder than I thought it would be! When the first one came out I think Caitlin was ten, Meaghan was six and Zoe was one. Caitlin is now 36 and has two children, Meaghan turned 32 this year, and Zoe is 27. What’s really surprising is that Becky and I haven’t aged at all!
As usual, the photos that I link to here are in a Google photo album, and you can also find them all on the Ingram Photo Server (if that link doesn’t work let me know and I will ask Meaghan to turn the server back on — it’s sitting on the coffee table at their house in Kingston). You can also find an old-fashioned web version of this letter, complete with old-timey Santa images, on my website. If you have any questions, you can reach me by email at [email protected] — unless you have a criticism, in which case please email [email protected].
It’s not every day you get a new member of the family, but this year we got two, although the way we got them was very different :-). The first was the inestimable Casey Graham Hemrica, who came into the world on March 31, to be greeted by big sister Quinn and family. He is a wise old man of nine months or so now, and he has already learned how to pull himself up on things, and has mastered the front crawl (the land version) after spending a little time trying out the combat crawl (which features the arms only). He has a number of thoughtful opinions on the issues of the day, including food — which he thinks is fantastic — and the fire in the fireplace, which he is also a big fan of.
And who is the second person to join the family? That would be Zoe’s boyfriend Jack, who some of you might recall from last year’s letter. I figure he is even more a part of the family now, because he convinced Zoe to fly halfway around the world to live with him in Australia! Zoe left on November 1, after a tear-filled goodbye at Pearson Airport, but she appears to be settling in quite well. They are living in Canberra, where Jack is practicing as a solicitor, and Zoe said his family has made her feel very welcome. Now all she has to do is learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, and how to eat prawns properly! How long are they going to be Down Under? Great question — some period of time between two years and forever 🙂 On the plus side, Jack recently talked about what might happen when they move back to Canada instead of if they move back, so we are keeping all of our fingers crossed!
Now that I’ve covered the most important events of the year, let me back up to the beginning. We spent Christmas at Caitlin and Wade’s place last year, where we all wore our matching green plaid Christmas pyjamas, and we taught Jack how to make a snowman and how to toboggan, and I even let him borrow my massive sheepskin overcoat, which belonged to our friend Kris’s father. That thing has to weigh about 25 pounds — it’s like wearing an entire sheep. Quinn also had a ride in the old yellow toboggan, which is so old that we used to drag Caitlin around in it. In January, Meaghan got some great news: they got hired at Empire Life, where Zoe used to work, and they love the job — especially the fact that they don’t have to work weekends the way they did with Best Buy 🙂
In February, Becky and I joined her brother Dave and sister-in-law Jenn at a log cabin they rented near the ski hill at Calabogie. But this wasn’t your usual log cabin — it was a gigantic four-bedroom log home with a games room and a barrel sauna and a separate guest cabin where Becky and I stayed. While Becky stayed at the cabin to look after some of the younger kids, I went downhill skiing for the first time in at least a couple of decades. And it went pretty well! When I accidentally took a wrong turn and wound up on a black diamond run it wasn’t even that bad. In March it was time to head for a warmer climate, so we headed down to Florida and spent some time relaxing in the sun and kayaking around the bay near Venice and playing pickleball. Everyone was very apologetic about you-know-who and his stupid policies and comments related to Canada, which was nice.
The plan was to get in the car and head home from Florida as soon as we got the word from Caitlin that Casey was on his way, and we were afraid that we might miss the big event, but we made it with time to spare! We not only got to visit Caitlin in the hospital and help her get her new man home, but we all got to hold young Casey while he was still more or less brand new, which was amazing. There is nothing quite as peaceful as holding a sleeping baby. Not long afterwards, it was time for a quick trip out to Calgary for a conference, where we stayed with friends and as usual dragged them out to the mountains, where we went for a great hike through the woods near the Banff Springs Hotel and walked along the river. In May it was time to open the cottage, and we had a lovely dinner with our extended family and Quinn and I made sand castles on the beach, and blew bubbles out in the driveway.
At the Farm, we came across a tiny fawn, maybe a week old, curled up by the old farmhouse. Apparently mothers leave their fawns while foraging and the young ones are trained to remain motionless until she returns. It was quite amazing — we saw the fawn again all nestled in the long grass, and it stayed so still I almost stepped on it. We also stopped in to visit Dave and Jenn who were camping near the St. Lawrence Seaway, and I decided to see if I could paddle the kayak across the Canada-U.S. border, which was only a few miles offshore. Don’t tell ICE but I did exactly that, and saw a pile of houses perched on tiny rocks in the middle of the river — and the seaway was even calmer the next day, so I paddled about three miles out to what’s known as Dark Island, where there’s a faux castle built by the former owner of the Singer sewing machine empire. Then it was time for Becky’s family’s annual get-together at Otter Lake near Kingston where we rented cabins and played on the beach and Becky took Quinn out on the standup paddleboard.
After Otter Lake the summer began in earnest, and thanks to Caitlin’s generous maternity leave, we had her and Quinn and Casey and even Wade at the lake for a stretch of several weeks, which was fantastic. Unlike previous years — where the “nurse curse” often meant cold and/or wet weather — we had pretty amazing weather. Quinn got brave at Otter Lake after seeing the older kids jumping off the paddleboard, so she spent a lot of the summer doing exactly that, until she was leaping in the air and going under the water for a surprisingly long time! As is traditional with new members of the family, Casey had a bath in the kitchen sink (we gave Jack a bye on this tradition) and Quinn helped Grandma make a cake, and then it was time for Quinn to turn three years old!
Wade spent hours making a butterfly cake that he saw on Instagram and Quinn wore her birthday crown and her Elsa dress and it was fantastic. And there was lots of time for Quinn and I to sit looking out at the lake and reflect on how great life is, and ride bikes and run up and down the dock and go for boat rides and play hide-and-seek in the popup trailer we bought this year. Quinn and I drew hopscotch patterns on the driveway with chalk and Becky read books with Quinn on the porch, and Wade read books with Casey and Quinn hugged her new brother and hugged her dad, and Meaghan read books with Quinn and her cousin Ophelia, and Becky and Caitlin held Casey in the lake and he even floated around in his very own floaty and seemed very relaxed.
August brought the usual reunion of old university friends at the Farm, but with a twist: several had turned 65 recently, including Becky, so there was a cake and much merriment. In September, Becky and I went backwoods camping as we have done for many years, but this time we decided to take it easy on our old bones and only did one short portage instead of three long uphill ones 🙂 We had a lovely time on this tiny lake, and went for a great hike, and had a beautiful afternoon at our campsite — which had the single largest collection of firewood I have ever seen that was obviously left by some kind person prior to us, and they even used their whittling skills to make some pioneer furniture from logs, which I used to eat dinner. Unfortunately, there was a fire ban due to weeks of no rain, so we couldn’t use any of that wood!
Back at the lake there was time for sunset cruises on the pontoon boat, and jumping off and floating around in the bay. At Wade’s family cottage, Quinn went tubing behind a motor boat with her cousins for the first time! Becky and I and a bunch of friends went to visit a friend who lives in Muskoka and we had some great food and a sing-a-long by the bonfire, and our friend Kathy and I went kayaking on Lake Rosseau. Due to a hilarious brain fart, I forgot to tie the kayaks down for the return trip, so one came off as we drove down the road 🙂 Luckily it didn’t hit anyone, it just landed in some nice lady’s front yard, and only had a couple of little dents. LOL. Later in the fall we had a full moon so bright that you could almost read a book on the beach — the photos make it look like I used some kind of filter but I didn’t.
Soon it was time for the warm plaid jackets and the mornings were filled with fog on the lake, but the boys and I went swimming anyway because it’s a tradition! We had another great family dinner on the screened-in porch, and Casey really enjoyed the mashed potatoes. We did our annual Thanksgiving hike through the forest and up to a lookout, and we only lost a couple of people along the way (my niece and her husband and their daughter), who took a different way down that turned into not being a way down at all. After we went back to our winter home in Buckhorn, we went to the Titanic Experience with Jack and Zoe, and it was very well done, with a recreation of the central staircase, and everyone got an ID card of one of the passengers and at the end you got to find out whether you died or not ( I died).
We also had a big going-away weekend at the Farm where friends and family showed up to say goodbye to Zoe. Halloween we spent at Caitlin and Wade’s, and Quinn went as Rapunzel and Zoe was a skeleton and Jack was a cowboy — we also made him disembowel a pumpkin, which is apparently not something they do in Oz. And then it was time for Zoe’s tearful goodbye, which I have already told you about, and for seeing Santa. In December, Becky and I flew out to Calgary for her company Christmas party, which was a great event held at the Spruce Meadows horse-jumping facility, and yes we went to the mountains again 🙂 Pretty soon it was time to get ready for Xmas. This one was in Buckhorn, where we went for toboggan rides down the driveway and hikes in the woods. We also got a foot of snow or so, which meant that Caitlin and Wade and Casey and Quinn had to stay longer, which was a great Christmas present in itself.
And that’s it for another year! We at Ingram Inc. hope that you and yours have had a great year with your friends and family, doing whatever it is that you enjoy doing, and that you have remained healthy and happy. If you are interested, I publish two email newsletters — one is a daily compendium of interesting news stories called When The Going Gets Weird, and the other is a weekly column about technology called The Torment Nexus. See you in 2026!