As some of you may remember from last year’s letter, this year started off very differently compared to every other year. Usually we get together at Marc & Kris’s farm near Buckhorn for New Year’s, but this time we were all in a ballroom at the Stone Mill Inn in St. Catherines, toasting the\u00a0marriage<\/a> of our eldest, Caitlin, to a wonderful young man named Wade Hemrica. It was a great wedding, with\u00a0beautiful bridesmaids<\/a>\u00a0and great food and a lot of good friends and family gathered, and of course there were hilarious and touching speeches from the bride and groom’s\u00a0parents, which Becky and I managed to get through<\/a> without too much trouble. Caitlin also convinced me to record myself singing and playing “Blackbird” by Paul McCartney, and then played that as the music for our father-daughter dance, which was pretty special. I may have had something in my eye at one point, but made it to the end without too much blubbering.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s hard to believe that two people as youthful as Becky and I could have a daughter as beautiful and accomplished as Caitlin, but there you have it. And despite the fact that I don’t drink, I had nine-and-a-half shots of tequila with\u00a0various family members<\/a>\u00a0and still managed to remain vertical for most of the evening! All in all it was a terrific party, and a great way to ring in the New Year. I told Caitlin and Wade it was so much fun that we should do it every year, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The ink was barely dry on Caitlin and Wade’s marriage certificate when Becky and I headed out west to Calgary, because her work was having an all-hands get-together (at which everyone got an Apple Watch for their service, which was pretty cool). We took a whirlwind trip up to Edmonton while we were there to see our old friends Greg & Helen and Paula & David, and then it was back down to Calgary where we stayed with our friends Alan and Jilaine. We even took a little drive out to Banff to\u00a0see the mountains<\/a>, which I must admit I miss a lot every time I see them. In February it was off to The Farm in Buckhorn to look after Marc & Kris’s dogs, which gave us an excuse to do some\u00a0snowshoeing<\/a>\u00a0through their lovely woods.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March, we decided enough was enough with the whole winter thing, and we headed down to\u00a0Florida<\/a>\u00a0with Becky’s brother Dave and his wife Jenn, where we rented a condo right next to the beach on Siesta Key, which has sand that is so soft it feels like you are walking in icing sugar. We rented some\u00a0bikes<\/a>\u00a0and toured around the Key, and one day we rented some kayaks and paddled around on the intracoastal waterway, which was great fun — we even\u00a0paddled up to<\/a>\u00a0a restaurant and got out and had lunch there. And one day we drove up to Anna Maria Island to visit my old Globe and Mail colleague Geoff Rowan and his wife Sue Brophey, where we\u00a0watched the sun go down<\/a>\u00a0at the Beach House restaurant. It was a nice break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In April, Becky and I headed off to Perugia again, the\u00a0little town<\/a>\u00a0in central Italy where we’ve been half a dozen times or so now for a journalism conference they have there. We wandered the streets and visited our favorite\u00a0former pagan temple<\/a>, built in the year 326 or so, and had some great\u00a0porchetta<\/a>\u00a0that was to die for. Also, a warning: If you order a steak Florentine, you will get something that is about\u00a024 ounces of meat<\/a>, and you will find it very difficult to walk afterwards. After Perugia, we met up with our friends Marc & Kris, Barb & Lori, Dave and Jenn and Sandra in Rome, and did a whirlwind tour of the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the\u00a0Pantheon<\/a>\u00a0and the Colosseum, where we took the tour that gets you into\u00a0the upper floors\u00a0of the ancient stadium<\/a>, which was fascinating.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we rented a couple of cars and drove down to the Amalfi Coast, where we stayed in a fantastic villa we rented near the little seaside town of\u00a0Massa Lubrense<\/a>, which is just south of Sorrento. It was a lovely place with four bedrooms in the main house and a little cottage with another bedroom, and it had\u00a0an amazing deck<\/a>\u00a0overlooking the Bay of Naples\u00a0and Mount Vesuvius<\/a>. And up on top of the house there was yet another deck, from which we could see the famous island of Capri. We made most of our own meals, which we ate at the outside\u00a0dining table<\/a>, but we also walked to a lovely family restaurant in the small town near the villa, and on our last night we ate at a fantastic little place perched on a hillside and watched the\u00a0sun set over Capri<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While we were there we\u00a0hiked up Vesuvius<\/a> (where of course there is an espresso stand at the very top) and explored Pompeii, and took a private boat tour of Capri, where we saw the\u00a0Faraglioni<\/a> rocks\u00a0and the various grottos, and I finally got to see the\u00a0Villa San<\/a> Michele, an amazing home built by Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor, that has\u00a0incredible views<\/a>\u00a0of the coast and the Bay of Naples.\u00a0But the best part of all was the day we spent with our boat captain\/tour guide\u00a0Guglielmo<\/a>\u00a0travelling down the coast and\u00a0visiting Amalfi<\/a>\u00a0and Positano (where\u00a0Dave and I swam\u00a0in the ocean<\/a>, which wasn’t too bad despite it being April). And the second best part was driving a standard-shift car at high speed around the incredibly winding streets of the Amalfi Coast — something I enjoyed hugely, but was possibly not enjoyed quite as much by some of my passengers \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Italy adventure was over much too soon, and then it was back to reality. In May, I went to San Francisco for a conference that I helped organize for the Columbia Journalism Review at the city’s\u00a0old press club<\/a>, featuring an interview with the guy who was running the Facebook news feed at the time, Adam Mosseri. That was fascinating, but I also just enjoyed being back in San Francisco and seeing some of\u00a0my favorite sights<\/a>\u00a0there. And I even managed to\u00a0find one<\/a> of\u00a0the “hidden gardens” that are located all over the city — public spaces that corporations have created in return for zoning allowances on their office towers, but are usually somewhat difficult to find. Back home, I spent the spring hauling my kayak around to new places, including Stratford — where I\u00a0bugged the swans<\/a>\u00a0before we all got\u00a0dressed up<\/a>\u00a0to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was great) and ran into a drunken Colm Fiore walking home with his wife — and also paddled Lovesick Lake\u00a0near Burleigh Falls<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also paddled up\u00a0Eels Creek<\/a>\u00a0just north of there to High Falls, which was a lovely trip with a few little rapids to make things interesting. In June we made it up to the cottage<\/a> for the summer, and it was a beautiful summer indeed, with warm days and nights\u00a0perfect<\/a> for paddling\u00a0and sunset\u00a0coffee cruises<\/a>\u00a0on the pontoon boat with my mum, and visits from\u00a0duck families<\/a>. We also did a spent a week in Muskoka in a great old cottage on Bala Bay with Becky’s family — I think we had about 16 of us at one point in a four-bedroom cottage<\/a>, and we did some stress-testing to see just\u00a0how many could fit\u00a0on a couple of floating “party islands<\/a>.” Back at Golden Lake, we\u00a0introduced<\/a>\u00a0my cousin Jessica’s tiny twins to the beach, and had a great\u00a01st birthday party\u00a0for them that was one of the highlights<\/a> of the summer. Becky and I also celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary with a delicious dinner at the funky\u00a0Blackbird Cafe<\/a>, in the thriving metropolis of Burnstown (population maybe 25 or so) near Renfrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have done for the past few years, we also went on a\u00a0canoe expedition<\/a>\u00a0with our friends Marc & Kris and Sandra, and this time we went to the east side of Algonquin Park — a three-day trip that started at Achray campground on Grand Lake (which also happens to be where Group of Seven painter Tom Thomson’s\u00a0ranger cabin<\/a>\u00a0is) and took us through Stratton Lake and into St. Andrew’s Lake, a lovely quiet little lake with only about half a dozen campsites on it. We got a nice big flat one at the end of a point, and did a couple of great day trips from there, including a hike up to the\u00a0lower part of High Falls<\/a>. I went for a beautiful moonlight paddle one evening, with just the fog to keep me company, and one morning we were greeted by a loon family that swam out of the morning mist to say hello. It was a great trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n On our way out we also did a hike along the top of\u00a0Barron Canyon<\/a>, a spectacular 300-foot-deep gorge<\/a> that was carved out of the Canadian Shield by a glacier at some point — almost twice as deep as Niagara Falls (after we came down from the trail, which had no fence or barrier, I mentioned to a young park ranger that we had a small child when we went up there but had lost them somehow and could he keep an eye out for them, and without missing a beat he said: “Oh, don’t tell me that — that would mean soo much paperwork”). By sheer coincidence, later in the summer, our friends Nathan & Glenna came up to the cottage for a visit, and we did Barron Canyon from the other side — paddling up it one afternoon, about 15 kilometres in all of\u00a0classic Canadian scenery<\/a>\u00a0with a 250-metre portage thrown in there just for fun (if you do this, I would recommend not trying to do it in an afternoon).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As summer drew to a close, the mornings got foggier (I ran into\u00a0this little guy<\/a>\u00a0paddling through the mist), and then it was time to move Meaghan and Zoe into their new apartment. Zoe is in third year at Queens and Meaghan transferred the Best Buy in Scarborough to the one in Kingston, so now they are sharing a tiny little flat that overlooks an\u00a0artsy little alleyway<\/a>. Zoe spent the summer working at a diner in downtown Toronto, where we dropped in one day and\u00a0made her serve us<\/a>. And Caitlin and Wade went on an amazing honeymoon through Scotland, the Netherlands,\u00a0Germany, Belgium and France — a trip that was marred slightly by the airline they booked a return trip on going bankrupt. But they made it home safely, and even got upgraded to first class! We also had a nice big Thanksgiving get-together at the cottage with\u00a0all sorts of<\/a>\u00a0nieces and nephews and assorted boyfriends and girlfriends. And of course, a few more early morning fog-burning-off paddles\u00a0around the lake<\/a>\u00a0while we were there, which was great.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n After we moved back to Toronto, I made a quick trip out to Calgary to speak at a conference there and saw our friends Alan and Jilaine again and made another whirlwind trip up to Edmonton to see our friend Paula Simons, who is\u00a0now a senator! I made another quick drive out to Banff just to say\u00a0hello to the mountains<\/a>. And thanks to fate, I had another great experience while I was there — through a total coincidence, my best friend from high school, Garry Hansen, who I haven’t seen since we graduated in 1979, happened to be in Calgary as well, so we\u00a0met up for brunch<\/a>\u00a0down by the Eau Claire market and had a great time catching up on almost 40 years of each other’s lives. And we made a quick trip to Kingston to see Meaghan and Zoe and saw some spectacular fall colours<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And soon it was time for\u00a0Christmas\u00a0to begin, with the\u00a0Christmas\u00a0market<\/a>\u00a0down at the Distillery District in Toronto and a great early present to ourselves: A concert by one of our favorite bands,\u00a0Mumford & Sons<\/a>! As I write this, Meaghan and Zoe and Zoe’s boyfriend Jacob (yes, Zoe has a boyfriend) are home madly wrapping presents and decorating the\u00a0Christmas\u00a0tree, and then we are off to see Caitlin and Wade and our favorite furry grandson Kip in Mount Hope for a quick visit before the madness of\u00a0Christmas\u00a0truly begins. And that’s about all the news from the Ingrams this year — here’s hoping your year was a good one, that your family and friends are all well, and that you have (or had) plenty of time with them over the holidays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want more photos of us, you can always find them at\u00a0The Ingram Family Photo Browser<\/a>. My email is\u00a0mathew@mathewingram.com<\/a>\u00a0and Becky’s is\u00a0becky@theingrams.ca<\/a>. We are both on Facebook (here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>). And if you’re on Twitter, you can follow me\u00a0here<\/a>. although I am trying to reduce my time on it, so far without much success. I’m also on Instagram\u00a0here<\/a>. And with that, as always, we at Ingram and Co. wish you all the best of the season and all the best in the year to come!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/image.png?resize=525%2C350&ssl=1\")
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