Dear Friends

I just spent a pleasant 20 minutes reading over our last few holiday letters. The one from 2019 is a particular gem because in it I wax poetic about how I'd successfully coaxed a jade plant into bloom. May the star-like flowers serve as an omen for a wonderful 2020, I wrote.

So wrong, so wrong. About the only good thing that came out of 2020 was Donald Trump losing the US Presidential election, and even that was challenged before 2021 was a week old.  Not the most auspicious beginning to a new year, was it?  Heat domes and fires and floods and tornados and other scarey things followed, with Covid-19 ever present in the background, like the mournful drone of a bagpipe. 

But we made it through it--or seem to have.  There even were some good things that happened to us. Among them are:

Gradually loosening public health restrictions.  This meant that we could spend some time with friends and family.  Lee made two gorgeous tables to use when we had a couple of friends over for what is called around here l'apéro in the back yard.  Then after we were doubled vaxed we invited them, two at a time, for dinner inside.  It was lovely to share a meal with people in person: much better than the Zoom dinner parties we had a few times during the previous winter.

A chance to spend some quality time with the grandkids. The first outing was a trip to Parc Agrignon, a lovely urban park right on the Métro line which has playgrounds and lawns, as well as some woods that you can almost get lost in.  The three (Jeanne now 11, Thomas now 9, and Louis now 5) created an elaborate game that had them facing some kind of threat and then overcoming it wonderfully.  I didn't catch all the details, but it obviously was fun for them--and fun for us. Since then we've had other good times, sometimes with all three, sometimes separately.  

A trip to the Bas St-Laurent region that was part business and all pleasure.  You may remember that I was supposed to go to Jakarta in 2020 to research a book, called Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Oceans, which, of course, Covid cancelled.  I continued to work on the project, though, and discovered that some of the most successful examples of pushing back the sea to make agricultural land exist along the south shore of the St. Lawrence estuary. 

So we took a jaunt down there and also checked out an amibitious effort by the tiny municipality of Ste-Flavie (pop. ~800) to buy out properties at risk along the shore.  Beautiful country: the background wall paper on the blog is a photo of a sunset taken while we were there.

Lee also spent far more time than he would have liked painting our front porch with its elaborate woodwork,  a job that hadn't been done for probably 25 years.  Looks great now and hopefully will stay that way for a decade or two.  He also had time to explore woodcarving for a project that will be a sort of celebration of Chartres, the glorious cathedral outside Paris. Maybe next year there will be photos of it to share with you.  For the moment, let's say that it has led him in directions I never would have imagined.

Lukas, Sophie and the boys moved at the beginning of the summer.  He'd been working for  the Canadian government since the previous fall, working from home in Montreal.  Now he's much closer to the office, although there's still a lot of distance work.  Sophie was hired immediately by a school commission in the neighborhood: a stellar teacher like her is in great demand.  The boys like the house they bought with its big backyard and quiet street in front to play in: quite a change from their second floor apartment in MTL.  

Elin and her partner Stuart are also in the process of buying a place--a condo under construction that should be great when it's finished although Covid has delayed things.  She is supposed to be back working one day a week on campus at McGill and the rest of the time distantly, but that may change as the Omircon variant is leading to governmental "encouragement" of working from home.  An advantage of doing that has meant that Jeanne has been able to come home for lunch as her school is just two blocks away.  It's a great neighborhood, with the vibe of a village.

As for me, I finished a version of the Against the Seas book, which Dundurn Press will bring out in early 2023, probably.  Before then I'm sure I'll have a lot of revisions to make, as the climate change situation becomes more dire.  And that brings us back to the gloomy thoughts I began this missive with.  

But, no, I can't leave you with them as the year winds down.  Just as bagpipes are much more than drones, so we must find a way to look to the future with a modicum of hope.  Here are some bagpipes playing Christmas music to lift your spirits. If you like bagpipes, that is, and I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't... (Smiley face, smiley face, smiley face.)

So best wishes for 2022 ....

 

Mary