Home for Christmas

I think I was more eager than my students to get out of class on the Thursday before break (my flight to Calgary was leaving on Friday so I had gotten off a day earlier). I met Tom in London, we had a lovely Nepalese dinner, and set off for Heathrow the following morning. I’ve made this journey more times than I care to count, but it was Tom’s first trip to North America. On the flight over, I watched Luca (adorable), Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings (watchable but also missable), Attack on the Block (pretty much what I’d expect if aliens ever attacked ØC - fun watch), and managed to have a bit of a nap. When we finally stepped out of the Calgary airport, it was like the scene from Cool Runnings. We were instantly assaulted by a blast of icy wind that made our breath visible and our boogers freeze.

Welcome to Canada.

One of our first days out was to the gun range. I’ve only been a few times, but I absolutely love shooting hand guns - and I’m good. We used a Sig P226 and a Glock Gen 5 .40 S&M. Dad had also taken Tom before and shot the same Sig and a Walther PPQ. I definitely preferred the Sig; it didn’t have as much kick back and was easier to aim, even though the Glock had a red-dot sight. While I’m a very good marksman, I don’t think I can say I’m an expert - given that on one round I was attempting to load the bullets into the magazine backwards.

Steve was also very keen to show off his rifle collection to Tom, who was equally keen to see and shoot them. We took them out to a neighbouring farmer’s field, set up Steve’s metal target, and spent time putting holes in it with an SKS, a Garand, and a Mosin. Steve went through all the details of each one, which wars they would have been used in, by which nations, and what made them unique, but I just recognise them as the normal-ish one, the chonky one, and the one with the really long bayonet. I’m definitely better with handguns than rifles, but I still managed the occasional satisfying ‘ping’ and a swinging target.

I had promised Tom a white Christmas, and I very much delivered. The backyard looked like a Christmas card and we loved going out for walks, even if they invariably ended in snowball fights. After over a year of my own cooking, being back to a full fridge and mom’s meals was amazing. I gorged myself on pfeffenussen, sugar cookies, Tim Hortons French vanilla, Costco queso dip, steaks, prime rib, and bucketsful of pomegranate salad. I made sure to consume all the bits that you can’t get in the UK too: all-dressed chips, root beer, egg nog, and poutine with proper cheese curds. We took a quick tour of downtown Calgary, saw parts of Okotoks, went out to Nanton, and met up with various friends in coffeeshops to catch up.

The whole break had us playing plenty of board/card games: Dutch Blitz, Forbidden Desert, Codenames, Hafl Tafl, 9 Mans Morris, and others, but I think the winner of the week was Secret Hitler. Essentially, in a group you have a minority of facists (normally 2 or 3) and one of them is Hitler. The facists are trying to get Hitler elected, and the liberals are trying to get enough liberal policies played or shoot the Führer. This results in a dialogue of accusations that sounds like a Facebook comments section, with everyone trying to identify the facists among them. Steve took a unique approach and just openly declared himself Hitler (despite being a liberal) until his own party got annoyed and shot him. Betrayals and broken trust abounded and everyone enjoyed it.

Rachael and Chris flew in on Christmas Eve day, so for the first time in 3 years, the whole family was together for Christmas. My family has found a new church, so we went there for our service. Immediately afterwards, it was all-hands-on-deck to prepare the Christmas Eve dinner. We had an amazing feast and I was very thankful that I was wearing stretchy leggings. Oma and Opa joined us for the meal, and afterwards we all sat in the great room to listen to Luke’s Christmas story and opening presents. I’ve been going through old photos while I’m here, and almost every year I have the same image: dad with our giant family Bible, sitting on the couch reading as the family listens and the dogs laying at our feet. I was really thankful that I was home again to take that same image this year.

Presents had to be small and portable this year, since they all had to come back in a suitcase, so I got some lovely jewellery, a book that I’d been wanting to read, a mini piano (until I can get an actual one), kitchen supplies (you know you’re an adult when…), lots of chocolates and candles, a beautiful blue toque, and a wax seal set.

Whenever my students start to badger me about which football team I support, I explain that I only support one by proxy. Whenever I’m with Tom I end up watching Man United games. I am by no means an expert, but I have started being able to know the players, the manager, and I even understand the offside rule. It also means I know which teams are the sworn enemies of Manchester United. So when I saw a package on my dad’s floor labelled ‘Manchester City Scarf’ I panicked for a split sec, thinking that dad had made a mistake. But my brain kicked in, and I realised dad had gotten the exact scarf he had intended. I grinned conspiratorially and left it, to be greatly rewarded by Tom’s conflicted facial expression upon opening a light blue and white scarf on Christmas Eve. On one had, he was a guest - a British guest - who had received a present; on the other hand, it was the rival livery of the team he has supported his entire life. He was very good natured, even putting it on for a picture, but the scarf strangely went missing shortly afterwards. I’ll have to make sure that it comes back to the UK with us.

Tom also had a bit of an interesting evening when Steve, who claims that he is owed a sword due to a long-outstanding debt in payment for photos of a certain fat baby, noticed that Tom was giving me more presents than Tom was giving Steve. I had given Tom a ‘thank you’ kiss for the beautiful Viking trefoil brooch he had given me and pointed out that that’s the reason I was getting the pretty presents - so Steve decided to follow suit.

I managed to bully the family into a photo in front of the Christmas tree before dessert, games, and me falling asleep on the couch. Merry Christmas!

The day after Christmas was a bit of a scramble to get ready for our skiing trip to the mountains. Tom had brought what warm winter clothing he had, however, it did not pass dad’s quality control check and he ended up loaning Tom a lot of his gear. Good thing too. On the days we were in Canmore and Lake Louise it was -30C with windchill making some places -45C, one of the top ten coldest places on earth. We had all been properly kitted out in thermals, insulating layers, merino wool, fleece jackets, puffy jackets, ski jackets, snow pants, lining gloves, thicker gloves, toques, and brand new hiking boots. As dad is fond of saying, ‘there’s no such thing as poor weather, just insufficient clothing.’

Our first stop in the mountains was the beautiful vista outside of the Lake Louise Hotel. This is the image I tell people to Google when they ask what Canada is like. The usually startlingly blue lake was all iced over and people were skating or enjoying the ice castle. Our group started along the hiking trail around the lake, bundled up with only our eyes visible. The boys amused themselves by throwing snowballs at the trees above the path, which ideally resulted in a mini avalanche from the branches, onto whichever unsuspecting family member was walking under it at the time. We trundled along like ‘March of the Penguins,’ to the end of the lake and could feel the temperature drop even lower once the sun was hidden behind the mountains. An ill-executed attempt to put Tom in a snowbank resulted in me having a very cold butt.

I wasn’t able to take many photos because my gloves were so thick I couldn’t bend my fingers to hold my camera with them on, taking them off was only possible for about 10 seconds, and my phone literally froze and died in the cold. Breathing out created a little warm air under my scarf, but the moisture would quickly latch onto my eyelashes and hair, freeze, and turn it white. I kept being reminded of the line “if our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze, ‘til sometimes we couldn’t see” from The Cremation of Sam McGee. I could’ve done with a crematorium to warm up in after the walk around the Lake, but made do with the hot tub back at the hotel.

The next morning, after an evening of board games and watching a hockey game (while Tom watched football on his phone - we tried), we were some of the first people on the hill at Lake Louise. Mom’s foot wasn’t up to a day strapped in a boot, so she read in the lodge while the rest of us headed to the gondola. The view from the top of the mountain was stunning. The ice crystals in the air cast a perfect sun dog and the light was just glancing off the tops of the range in front of us.

I hadn’t been skiing in over a decade, the last time was probably in Austria when I was at Bode, however, I was thankful to find that all came back to me quickly and I didn’t have any major wipe-outs (I had one tip over in the line up to the lift, but that doesn’t count). When you stepped out of the gondola, the icy air would instantly bite at any uncovered skin; you knew exactly where your sleeves or your gloves or your hat ended if it wasn’t covered by something else, but once you were moving you were able to warm up more. Tom is already eagerly researching potential future ski trips.

Due to Covid regulations, everyone needed to show their vaccination records and receive a stamp. This was done indoors and on your hand, however, this made it rather difficult to show the gondola attendant outside since it meant that I kept having to remove multiple layers of gloves in the freezing cold. The stamp-giver was a bit taken aback when I asked her to just stamp my face, but I maintain it was a stroke of brilliance and my detractors were just jealous of my genius.

Our last day in Canmore we walked around Quarry Park and Lake Minnewanka. We saw a herd of elk and were able to enjoy the absolute splendour of the mountains. See if you can guess what my family’s favourite colour is.

The last day, as always, is a very sad packing up. Mom was desperate to get me to take as much of what’s left in my room as possible, so I ended up bringing a whole other suitcase full of books and some costumes that I still had in my closet. This holiday was everything I wanted it to be, and everything I missed so dearly last year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!