2013 Xmas Letter

In Toronto, 2013 has been the year of Rob Ford.  A story so notorious it needs no preamble.  It launched our middling metropolis into the international news cycle with an all-you-can eat buffet for late night comedians and You Tube trolling.  Every revelation has been more outlandish, unbelievable and embarrassing than the previous. Rob Ford has had an XXXL impact on our city...and our family J

Lack of appropriate governance is the norm here.  In the last 52 weeks Maggie (17) Hannah (15) have spent about six of them without the direct supervision of parents. There were three weeks in the Summer doing a high school course in Archaeology , living “on campus” and spending half their time on-site digging and mapping an ancient aboriginal village. What they also discovered was that their teachers/chaperones had little interest in monitoring their wards. The kids were free to roam the woods and streams nearby and generally be teenagers.  It was like life before risk management.

 In November, we also left them Lord-Of-The-Flies-style when Carolyn and I took an eighteen day trip to Singapore, Laos and Cambodia. They learned a huge life lesson: if you leave the milk on the table all day, it spoils; AND you have to go buy more! They had fun, but I am convinced that we had more. See the pics here of our 20^th anniversary travels in Southeast Asia.

The girls did their usual co-curricular (used to be called “extra-curricular”) activities despite a big ‘ol labour disruption with teachers that got everyone mad.  Maggie had a leading role in the ECI production of Legally Blonde and Hannah’s dragonboat team repeated as champions in their division.

What “Mayor” Ford would call the “gravy train” continued when Maggie and I went out for crack in March. In our case it was mountain biking, rappelling and hiking the rock in Moab, Utah. It was payback for taking her sister to Paris in March ’12, I was a victim of coercion to be sure.

Like Rob, Carolyn was “voted off the island” by a crazy council – Rob has yet to leave, but Carolyn left Jumpstart in June.  She is close to finding a new role in Marketing and Development for a not-for-profit. Rob, on the other hand, will likely have a reality TV show shortly.

Rob has barely kept his head above water. That is how we felt this summer when we experienced the “flood of the century”. Our basement was awash. We are just finishing that renovation. When you look out back and see your patio furniture floating be sure to run downstairs to helplessly watch the sump well bubble up and soak your floor. Now that is a fun power outage.

Hopefully, Ford is on the cusp of his next lifestage...and so are we. There is raucous debate at our dinner table regarding university applications, aspirations and course selections.  With luck and money we may move the kids into university life over the next couple of years.  We are practicing for that empty nest stage by Skyping  a lot and draining the bank account.

2013 was not without its challenges, and this is where we diverge with His Worship.  He announced his “cut the waist” challenge  where he would have a public weigh-in weekly to trim down his 330 lbs by 50 lbs.  He managed to shed 17 pounds, twisted his ankle getting off the scale and quit when he got hungry.  We, however,  are resilient and we’re lucky that our problems are beatable, as we support friends who have serious health issues, family conflict or serious economic challenges.  We will do our best to remember our good fortune in 2014, which includes our good friends, loving family and very likely a new mayor.

Note: For the minority of readers who enjoy this kind of thing you can find SOME of the historical annual letters now posted on this blog. We will try to find and post the remainder mainly for grandparents.