Until just a few weeks ago, I had some hope that this Christmas letter would be significantly different from last year’s version, which looked back on the year that COVID-19 arrived and became a global pandemic (we found a Christmas ornament online that expressed our thoughts about 2020 — see if you can make out what it says). Before about mid-December, things were looking pretty good, relatively speaking: most people (the smart ones, anyway) had gotten not one but two shots of vaccine — in many cases, mRNA vaccines, which were developed faster than any other vaccine in human history. The rate of COVID growth had slowed in most places, hospitals were no longer overwhelmed, and Christmas looked like it might be something approaching normal.
Then we found out about the Omicron variant, which spreads somewhere between two and three times as rapidly as the Delta variant. International — and even local — travel suddenly became a gamble. If we’re double-vaxxed and boosted, does that mean we can still get together with family, or should we bail on Christmas yet again? With so many unknowns (is Omicron milder than Delta? Is this the beginning of the end, where we all get COVID but it doesn’t turn into anything serious and it gradually becomes just like the flu?) everyone has had to make their own personal choices — it’s like a roll of the dice, except you’re rolling at the same time you’re playing Russian roulette.
Last year, we wound up shelving our plans to have family at our place near Buckhorn for Christmas, and instead had a delicious meal and quiet evening with our next-door neighbours Marc and Kris. On Boxing Day, we wound up having a wonderful surprise visit from our oldest daughter Caitlin and her husband Wade, who called to say they were out for a walk and then showed up at the door, having driven all the way from Ancaster. We set up chairs and a propane fire-pit in the garage and had a charcuterie plate and some drinks, then went for a hike, and it was lovely. After things calmed down a bit, and we had gotten our first vaccine, we got together for a late Christmas at our place in March, and went for lots more hikes and skated on the pond and visited the neighbour’s sheep.
Speaking of sheep, some of you who get these letters and/or follow Becky or me on Facebook may remember the saga of Primo — the runt of the 2020 litter, who was shunned by his mother and basically raised by Becky and Zoe during the first COVID quarantine, and then stopped walking due to a vitamin deficiency, then miraculously learned to walk again and rejoined the flock. Unfortunately, whatever was wrong with Primo seemed to rear its ugly head again in the spring, and he sort of wasted away and eventually passed on to his eternal reward. He is buried up near the garden that his owner planted, and we said some words over his grave. It’s not easy being a sheep, but Primo did his best, and he was well loved for the year he was with us. May he rest in peace.
On a brighter note, Bella the sheep had another set of twins, who we named Butch and Sundance after trying a bunch of other matched names (the previous set of twins we named Pebbles and Bam-Bam). Unlike Primo, these two got big and strong very quickly and have blended in with their flock. We spent a couple of weeks in the spring making maple syrup from a couple of large trees by the driveway — boiling down the buckets of sap on the BBQ and then finishing it on the stove, a surprisingly delicate procedure if you don’t want the sap to suddenly become hard candy. I learned that syrup darkens as the season goes on, a result of bacteria coming to life as the weather warms up. We produced three different colours of syrup over two weeks, the last one as dark as strong coffee. It has a delicious, earthy sort of flavour, and is great over ice cream.
Spring brought warmer weather, flowers and visiting deer, a trip up to the cottage for May 24th, and our second vaccine shot in early June, which made us (temporarily at least) feel invincible, and Becky started volunteering at vaccine clinics as a way of paying it forward, something she continued to do throughout the year, especially when the boosters came. After our shots, we stopped in to see my mother Linda at her retirement home, which had been locked down for months — she and most of the rest of the people in it got COVID, although their cases were mostly mild (I visited her several times in the hospital after Christmas, all gowned and masked and face-masked and gloved — she mostly just read books and was eventually released). Near the end of the month, we gathered with Becky’s family at a resort on Otter Lake near Kingston, where we rented a bunch of cabins and had a great time pedalling around on their water bikes, playing volleyball and kayaking and hanging out on the beach.
Unfortunately, June also brought some bad news. I was very glad that we had visited with my mother earlier that month, because that was the last time we saw her alive. She had a massive brain hemorrhage — another in a long line of such assaults to her brain over the years — and never regained consciousness. Thanks to the understanding of the staff at Sunnybrook in Toronto, almost her entire family were able to be with her in a room in the emergency department, and were able to say their goodbyes before she finally passed on to her eternal reward. I’m sure she is regaling the angels with her wild stories and quoting at random from Shakespearean sonnets, one of her favorite pastimes.
Luckily, the restrictions on gathering in groups were lifted just after my mother passed away, which meant we were able to have a big group of friends and family at the cottage for a memorial celebration of her life — thankfully, it was a beautiful warm and sunny day, and we placed her favourite chair on the beach where she used to sit, with her hat and a book and a glass of wine, and then we toasted her memory and told funny stories about her, and it was lovely — or as lovely as such an event can be. If you’re interested in learning a bit more about her, I wrote something about her life and what she brought to the world.
The next couple of months were a bit of a blur of friends and family, a funeral, moving her things out of her place in Toronto, and trying to grab hold of summer before it disappeared. Among the highlights (for me at least) was that I got up close and personal with one of the young bald eagles that were born this year to a mating pair that took up residence in a tall pine on one of the islands in our lake (they don’t get their white heads and yellow feet for about five years apparently). It was fascinating to watch them grow and practice flying and hunting — something that I don’t remember seeing before at our lake, until the adults first showed up a couple of years ago. They are majestic. On the somewhat less-majestic front, we also adopted a young chipmunk, who we named Eric, and had fun feeding him peanuts in the shell down by the beach. And Meaghan and Zoe took in a somewhat troubled rescue cat named Pomegranate.
The end of summer brought another epic back-country camping trip with our friends Marc and Kris — this one to MacEwen Lake near Carnarvon, which required a couple of hours of paddling and only one fairly long and rocky portage. We had a great campsite on top of a rock outcropping that faced west, making it perfect for sunset viewing (and diving), although I confess my aging bones and muscles found the rocks less than inviting when it came to sitting — not to mention sleeping. I managed to tip both myself and Marc out of canoes (in separate incidents), and in my defence I would say I usually bring the kayak, so have grown unaccustomed to canoes. But luckily both our phones dried out as they are supposed to, and it was sunny, so no harm done. And we had cinnamon rolls cooked over the fire for my birthday, which was great.
Thanksgiving meant another big gathering of family at the cottage, where luckily it was warm enough to sit outside a lot of the time, and there was much guitar playing and drinking, and some amazing food of course, and some hikes to the nearby lookout. It all felt very… normal, which was nice. And then later in the fall, we got some fantastic news from Caitlin and Wade, news that made the storm clouds of COVID and everything else that has happened recede at least a little: they are expecting a baby sometime in late June or early July! Our first grandchild! Which means Becky and I are really old! But is still amazing! I for one am going to spoil that kid rotten, and I have already let Caitlin and Wade know this.
The rise of Omicron, not to mention whatever variants might follow it, has made everything about the future a giant question mark. Will we be travelling anywhere in 2022, or will we have to shelve those plans like we did last year? Who knows! But what we do know is that we are all healthy and happy — or as happy as we can be under the circumstances — and we are looking forward to having a bouncing baby grandchild to spoil in the not-too-distant future. We hope you and yours are likewise well and as happy as can be under the circumstances, and we wish you all the best for Christmas and for whatever comes our way in 2022.
This Christmas feels a little different than it did last year, where we were worried about the Omicron variant of COVID. This time, we’re worried about the BF.7 variant, and a resurgent flu virus, and RSV, all of which have combined to create what the news calls a “tri-demic” 🙂 Remember when we weren’t worried about pandemics, and we just wandered around hugging and kissing people without a care in the world? It seems like so long ago now. Anyway, we are going to try and make Christmas as normal as it could be this year, while still taking reasonable health precautions. And why are we concerned about RSV, you might ask, since it mostly affects young children? Because we have one! Not Becky and I, of course, but our daughter Caitlin and her husband Wade, who had a beautiful baby girl named Quinn Leanne Hemrica in June. We are grandparents! And yes, this means we are really old!
Note: If you just want to see the photos from this letter all in one place, there’s a Google Album of them. And if you want to see more photos of the Ingram clan, check out the Ingram Family photo album, which has every photo I’ve ever taken, plus a bunch of old print photos that I’ve scanned in over the years.
Okay, now that I’ve given away the big news, back to the letter. We started the year, as we often do, by eating a huge amount of delicious food in a kind of New Year’s smorgasbord, and we did some skating on the pond near the house. Just to recap, we moved to Buckhorn (about two hours north of Toronto) a few years ago, just before COVID hit. Good timing! We live in a duplex with our good friends Marc and Kris, on a lovely piece of property out in the country with acres of hiking trails. It is basically paradise. In February, we went to Ottawa for our annual Winterfest trip, but there was a warm spell so they closed the Ottawa canal (the world’s longest skating rink supposedly, although the Dutch might disagree). So since we couldn’t go skating and have poutine and Beaver Tails, we just went bowling (A note for the non-Canadians: Beaver Tails are fried dough and sugar, not actual tails from actual beavers). We were even joined by our niece Lindsay, who enjoyed bowling despite being nine months pregnant!
Then it was off to Florida with Becky’s brother Dave and his wife Jenn, where we rode bikes and spent a lovely day kayaking and just generally enjoyed being warm and not surrounded with snow. After a few days back home to catch our breath, we were off to Italy for the annual journalism conference I go to in Perugia, a lovely town about two hours north of Rome, in Umbria.
We haven’t been able to go to Italy for the past couple of years, so we were even more excited to go this time than we usually are. After the conference, we finally got to do the trip that we had planned for 2020 — a drive with our Italian friend Anna, down to Puglia in the south of Italy, near the heel of the boot. We stopped for lunch by the sea in Trani and eventually we arrived at our destination: a bed-and-breakfast near Lecce, owned and operated by Anna’s stepdaughter. Since it was early in the season, we had the whole place to ourselves — just us and the cook, who made sure we had pastries for our breakfast on the patio. If you are ever in the area, be sure to check out At The Aia. It was lovely.
We made a number of day trips around Puglia, including Lecce (where we did not eat at this hilariously terrible restaurant) and Sant Isidoro, where we had a seafood lunch, including sea urchins, which were delicious. We went to a nearby park by the Ionian sea, where Anna and I went for a (chilly) swim while Becky sunbathed on the rocks. Another day, we strolled the boardwalk in Santa Caterina and Santa Maria al Bagno, two seaside towns where I also swam, after diving in off the rock shelf surrounding the bay. We did a day trip to Gallipoli (not the one where there was a huge battle in World War One, but the quiet Italian one).
The piece de resistance came when we drove a few hours north to Matera, which has been continuously inhabited for about 150,000 years. The shepherds lived with their families (and sometimes their livestock) in caves carved out of the cliffs, and over the past few decades a lot of those ancient cave homes have been transformed into cafes, bed-and-breakfast rentals, and restaurants. We stayed in a former cave that had been turned into a modern-style Airbnb just beside the main cathedral, with an amazing view of the old town (which was even more amazing at night). And we hiked about two kilometres down a goat track, across a Tibetan swing bridge, and up the hill on the other side to get a view from one of the ancient caves, looking back at the old town.
The only real downside of the trip was that both Becky and I got COVID — not a big surprise, I guess, since we spent several days at a conference with thousands of attendees from different countries. We tried to mask and obey all the protocols, but it is difficult to do while eating in an Italian restaurant! Anyway, whether because of all the boosters and vaccinations and whatnot or because of our strong constitutions, we both got a very mild case — no fever at all, or any other symptoms for that matter, apart from a sore throat.
Back in Ontario, we made a quick trip up to our cottage at Golden Lake, and then jumped on a plane and headed to Colorado, where we attended the wedding of Kris’s niece Becca and her partner Allee, and stayed in the small town of Palmer Lake, in an Airbnb that just happened to be right beside a great hiking trail (I was huffing and puffing and thought I was just getting old, and then remembered we were about 8,000 feet above sea level). After the wedding, we visited the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, these huge spikes of red sandstone and limestone that were pushed upwards millions of years ago, around the time the Rocky Mountains were formed.
Towards the end of June, we spent the week with Becky’s family at a resort on Otter Lake near Kingston, where they have a bunch of small cabins by the lake. We had a stretch of pretty beautiful weather, so I got out in the kayak a lot, and managed to see both a bald eagle and a little loon baby. I went out one evening and there was a loon sitting on a nest on this tiny island, and the next morning there was a mom and dad loon and a little baby one, maybe six inches long. He rode on his mom’s back for awhile before swimming around on his own. I also took my lovely bride out for a paddle on a standup paddleboard while we were there, and I am glad to say that we both survived!
Just as we got done with that week, Quinn made her entrance. Trust me when I say that even though Quinn is only six months old, we probably have about 10,000 photos and videos of her, because of course she is the cutest baby that has ever been born — and is also a genius 🙂 Becky and I got to see her in the hospital when she wasn’t even a day old, and we got to hold her when she was very tiny, and then got to spend a bunch of time with her at the lake as well (where we baptized her both in the lake and in the kitchen sink). I got to nap while holding Quinn a few times, which has to be one of the most peaceful and relaxing things ever — although I’m not sure whether I helped put her to sleep or she helped put me to sleep. Probably a bit of both!
In addition to holding Quinn as much as possible, we also squeezed in a backcountry camping trip with Marc and Kris in Massasauga Provincial Park, which is second in size only to Algonquin Park. We spent several days on Spider Lake (named for its shape, not its inhabitants). It was lovely and warm, which was great for swimming but not so great if you don’t like mosquitoes. Back at the cottage, an unexpected surprise! A young boy who was making sand castles on our beach dug up a carved stone arrowhead, which looks to be about 4,000 years old or so. I’ve dug on that beach my whole life, and all I’ve ever found are old fishing lures, and the occasional cigarette butt 🙂
In the fall, Becky got whisked off for a whirlwind trip to a resort in British Columbia by her work, where they went salmon fishing and Becky caught a big one, which we hope to eat soon! While she was fishing, I was paddling up Barron Canyon in Algonquin Park, which is one of my favourite places. There were some magical days in the fall, when the lake was just like a mirror, and lots of time out on the porch playing guitar with our nephews Scott and Curtis (practicing Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”). Speaking of guitars, in one of the best gifts next to Quinn’s arrival, I got a brand new guitar for my 60th birthday! I also got another special treat: my nephew Matthew organized a big party, cleverly disguised as his wedding 🙂 On Thanksgiving, we had a fairly big gang at the cottage, we did our usual hike up to a lookout over the lake.
In December, Becky and I made another whirlwind trip to Calgary for her work Christmas party and to see some old friends, and managed to get out to Banff for a quick mountain visit. Then we helped move our youngest daughter Zoe from Kingston, where she was living with our middle child Meaghan, to a new apartment in Toronto. Unfortunately, it also involved trying to manhandle a 400-pound pullout couch into her apartment (pivot!). The couch refused to shrink in order to make it through the door, so we eventually left it by the side of the road so it could become someone else’s problem 🙂
In conclusion, we had a pretty action-packed year. As always, we hope that you and yours had a great year as well, and we wish you all the best for the coming one. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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This Christmas feels a little different than it did last year, where we were worried about the Omicron variant of COVID. This time, we’re worried about the BF.7 variant, and a resurgent flu virus, and RSV, all of which have combined to create what the news calls a “tri-demic” 🙂 Remember when we weren’t worried about pandemics, and we just wandered around hugging and kissing people without a care in the world? It seems like so long ago now. Anyway, we are going to try and make Christmas as normal as it could be this year, while still taking reasonable health precautions. And why are we concerned about RSV, you might ask, since it mostly affects young children? Because we have one! Not Becky and I, of course, but our daughter Caitlin and her husband Wade, who had a beautiful baby girl named Quinn Leanne Hemrica in June. We are grandparents! And yes, this means we are really old!
Note: If you just want to see the photos from this letter all in one place, there’s a Google Album of them. And if you want to see more photos of the Ingram clan, check out the Ingram Family photo album, which has every photo I’ve ever taken, plus a bunch of old print photos that I’ve scanned in over the years.
Okay, now that I’ve given away the big news, back to the letter. We started the year, as we often do, by eating a huge amount of delicious food in a kind of New Year’s smorgasbord, and we did some skating on the pond near the house. Just to recap, we moved to Buckhorn (about two hours north of Toronto) a few years ago, just before COVID hit. Good timing! We live in a duplex with our good friends Marc and Kris, on a lovely piece of property out in the country with acres of hiking trails. It is basically paradise. In February, we went to Ottawa for our annual Winterfest trip, but there was a warm spell so they closed the Ottawa canal (the world’s longest skating rink supposedly, although the Dutch might disagree). So since we couldn’t go skating and have poutine and Beaver Tails, we just went bowling (A note for the non-Canadians: Beaver Tails are fried dough and sugar, not actual tails from actual beavers). We were even joined by our niece Lindsay, who enjoyed bowling despite being nine months pregnant!
Then it was off to Florida with Becky’s brother Dave and his wife Jenn, where we rode bikes and spent a lovely day kayaking and just generally enjoyed being warm and not surrounded with snow. After a few days back home to catch our breath, we were off to Italy for the annual journalism conference I go to in Perugia, a lovely town about two hours north of Rome, in Umbria.
We haven’t been able to go to Italy for the past couple of years, so we were even more excited to go this time than we usually are. After the conference, we finally got to do the trip that we had planned for 2020 — a drive with our Italian friend Anna, down to Puglia in the south of Italy, near the heel of the boot. We stopped for lunch by the sea in Trani and eventually we arrived at our destination: a bed-and-breakfast near Lecce, owned and operated by Anna’s stepdaughter. Since it was early in the season, we had the whole place to ourselves — just us and the cook, who made sure we had pastries for our breakfast on the patio. If you are ever in the area, be sure to check out At The Aia. It was lovely.
We made a number of day trips around Puglia, including Lecce (where we did not eat at this hilariously terrible restaurant) and Sant Isidoro, where we had a seafood lunch, including sea urchins, which were delicious. We went to a nearby park by the Ionian sea, where Anna and I went for a (chilly) swim while Becky sunbathed on the rocks. Another day, we strolled the boardwalk in Santa Caterina and Santa Maria al Bagno, two seaside towns where I also swam, after diving in off the rock shelf surrounding the bay. We did a day trip to Gallipoli (not the one where there was a huge battle in World War One, but the quiet Italian one).
The piece de resistance came when we drove a few hours north to Matera, which has been continuously inhabited for about 150,000 years. The shepherds lived with their families (and sometimes their livestock) in caves carved out of the cliffs, and over the past few decades a lot of those ancient cave homes have been transformed into cafes, bed-and-breakfast rentals, and restaurants. We stayed in a former cave that had been turned into a modern-style Airbnb just beside the main cathedral, with an amazing view of the old town (which was even more amazing at night). And we hiked about two kilometres down a goat track, across a Tibetan swing bridge, and up the hill on the other side to get a view from one of the ancient caves, looking back at the old town.
The only real downside of the trip was that both Becky and I got COVID — not a big surprise, I guess, since we spent several days at a conference with thousands of attendees from different countries. We tried to mask and obey all the protocols, but it is difficult to do while eating in an Italian restaurant! Anyway, whether because of all the boosters and vaccinations and whatnot or because of our strong constitutions, we both got a very mild case — no fever at all, or any other symptoms for that matter, apart from a sore throat.
Back in Ontario, we made a quick trip up to our cottage at Golden Lake, and then jumped on a plane and headed to Colorado, where we attended the wedding of Kris’s niece Becca and her partner Allee, and stayed in the small town of Palmer Lake, in an Airbnb that just happened to be right beside a great hiking trail (I was huffing and puffing and thought I was just getting old, and then remembered we were about 8,000 feet above sea level). After the wedding, we visited the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, these huge spikes of red sandstone and limestone that were pushed upwards millions of years ago, around the time the Rocky Mountains were formed.
Towards the end of June, we spent the week with Becky’s family at a resort on Otter Lake near Kingston, where they have a bunch of small cabins by the lake. We had a stretch of pretty beautiful weather, so I got out in the kayak a lot, and managed to see both a bald eagle and a little loon baby. I went out one evening and there was a loon sitting on a nest on this tiny island, and the next morning there was a mom and dad loon and a little baby one, maybe six inches long. He rode on his mom’s back for awhile before swimming around on his own. I also took my lovely bride out for a paddle on a standup paddleboard while we were there, and I am glad to say that we both survived!
Just as we got done with that week, Quinn made her entrance. Trust me when I say that even though Quinn is only six months old, we probably have about 10,000 photos and videos of her, because of course she is the cutest baby that has ever been born — and is also a genius 🙂 Becky and I got to see her in the hospital when she wasn’t even a day old, and we got to hold her when she was very tiny, and then got to spend a bunch of time with her at the lake as well (where we baptized her both in the lake and in the kitchen sink). I got to nap while holding Quinn a few times, which has to be one of the most peaceful and relaxing things ever — although I’m not sure whether I helped put her to sleep or she helped put me to sleep. Probably a bit of both!
In addition to holding Quinn as much as possible, we also squeezed in a backcountry camping trip with Marc and Kris in Massasauga Provincial Park, which is second in size only to Algonquin Park. We spent several days on Spider Lake (named for its shape, not its inhabitants). It was lovely and warm, which was great for swimming but not so great if you don’t like mosquitoes. Back at the cottage, an unexpected surprise! A young boy who was making sand castles on our beach dug up a carved stone arrowhead, which looks to be about 4,000 years old or so. I’ve dug on that beach my whole life, and all I’ve ever found are old fishing lures, and the occasional cigarette butt 🙂
In the fall, Becky got whisked off for a whirlwind trip to a resort in British Columbia by her work, where they went salmon fishing and Becky caught a big one, which we hope to eat soon! While she was fishing, I was paddling up Barron Canyon in Algonquin Park, which is one of my favourite places. There were some magical days in the fall, when the lake was just like a mirror, and lots of time out on the porch playing guitar with our nephews Scott and Curtis (practicing Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”). Speaking of guitars, in one of the best gifts next to Quinn’s arrival, I got a brand new guitar for my 60th birthday! I also got another special treat: my nephew Matthew organized a big party, cleverly disguised as his wedding 🙂 On Thanksgiving, we had a fairly big gang at the cottage, we did our usual hike up to a lookout over the lake.
In December, Becky and I made another whirlwind trip to Calgary for her work Christmas party and to see some old friends, and managed to get out to Banff for a quick mountain visit. Then we helped move our youngest daughter Zoe from Kingston, where she was living with our middle child Meaghan, to a new apartment in Toronto. Unfortunately, it also involved trying to manhandle a 400-pound pullout couch into her apartment (pivot!). The couch refused to shrink in order to make it through the door, so we eventually left it by the side of the road so it could become someone else’s problem 🙂
In conclusion, we had a pretty action-packed year. As always, we hope that you and yours had a great year as well, and we wish you all the best for the coming one. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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