So we’ve come to that time of year again – when we put together our annual Christmas letter to give the updates on our family:
Mick continues to work for Hitachi ID in Calgary – and has been promoted to Team Lead. His work keeps him very busy – being over-worked and under staffed – but overall still seems to be enjoying things. Mick takes daily injections for his Multiple Sclerosis and thus far he has had not further episodes. He has started looking for a new place to live – it is time to move out of a basement suite. He is debating between buying or renting but with the economy in Calgary being a bit strained it is both a good time to buy but a bit scary as well when he is on his own.
Keelan continues to work at Chalet GM in Kimberley and officially completed his apprenticeship and is now a red seal auto tech. He has also completed his provincial vehicle inspection course and is working his way through the GM training programs. He had decided that he did not want to commute to Kimberley another winter and over the spring and early summer he looked for houses. He found one house on a private sale that he looked at carefully and put in an offer but the private seller signed another offer while Keelan was getting the sale terms done up by his lawyer. The seller still took Keelan’s offer and only later told him he actually had signed another. This was very disappointing but a valuable lesson that prompted him to engage the services of a real estate agent to assist him. He bought a better home in Kimberley in July for less money so all is good. He kept his enthusiasm in check until everything was finalized – and seems very happy with his purchase. There are a number of renovations that he wants to do – but decided to live in the place for awhile before deciding how to proceed. He and Mew officially moved to the new place in August and our the house in Cranbrook seems to be somewhat quiet and empty (but easier to clean and grocery bills are way down). Keelan has spent much of his spare time taking some amazing pictures – if you are interested he posts on Instagram: keelan.m.boyle.
Deb continues to work at inpatient psychiatry and in April used her well earned money to fulfill a life long dream of learning to scuba dive in Roatan. She was incredibly lucky and ended up having private lessons with Nico for her entire open water certification. And she fell in love,,,,, with scuba diving. What an incredible world it is underwater! After just a little reassurance around equalizing she was game for anything including a deep water dive. The only problem was that she seemed to forget to breathe, consistently coming back with more air in her tank than her co divers. Deb was also very lucky to be able to stay with Arlene and Ross (sister and brother in law) and enjoyed their hospitality, company and advice for two full weeks. One minor glitch with a tropical storm delayed her flight home by a day but really who can complain about another day in paradise even though most was spent at the airport.
Pat doesn’t continue to work and his last day with the BC government was May 17th. He packed up his office and handed in his keys with a plan in hand. After two years of drying food, finding gear, creating what he could not find, Pat was ready to head on his post retirement trip down the Milk, Missouri and Mississippi rivers in a kayak. With kayak on the roof and the car loaded with food and gear, Deb drove him across the border through a snow storm and over mud roads, looking for a good place to launch. We stopped for the night in Malta – the farmer who checked us in to the motel had 2 inches of mud stuck to his boots which he had left outside (the mud should have been an omen). We asked him for a recommendation of where to put the kayak in and he suggested driving further past the last irrigation dam. So we took off the next morning and ended up having to go to where the Milk River joins the Missouri River. It took another half day of scouting the river to find a dry enough place to launch the kayak. A daily journal of Pat’s journey is posted on our web site http://spiritridge.info and is well worth the read – he met the challenges with creativity and humour but to briefly summarize – he made it to the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers (a place where Lewis and Clark camped 204 years earlier). After stopping for several days of thought and reflection he made the decision not to proceed any further. The sinking mud that he encountered loading and unloading the kayak had put a significant strain on his knees and with having had arthroscopic surgery just two weeks before leaving on the trip, he did not want to risk further damage. So Pat rented a car, and took the kayak down to the cabin in Kentucky where he spent a couple of weeks cleaning and repairing things that ten years of non-occupancy and squirrels had done to the cabin. The squirrels had chewed their way in and had used the cabin as a food storage facility and lavatory – read many days of cleaning. He discovered that the nearby State Park at Lake Barkley had a pool, hot tub and most importantly a shower which he made good use of as there was no water at the cabin. He caught the Amtrak back to Montana part of which followed the river route that he had kayaked.
Back for two weeks and Pat took off in his Smart Car for Regina to spend some time with his aunt, Wanda. He was able to assist in helping Wanda to clear back some trees at the beach and help sort through some of the stuff in the garage, as well as getting in a visit with his uncle Ray. Unfortunately, Ray passed away in September so Pat was happy to have seen him. Wanda, her daughter Tara and grandson Sam came to visit us later in the summer. It was great to spend some time with them, Sam had a couple of games of golf with Keelan and they all endured learning to play Canasta.
Pat has spent a lot of the summer at our cabin at Moyie – sorting through, organizing and purging many of the things that had accumulated in the garage and loft. Deb would often join him on the weekends whenever she could – and we both found the time very relaxing. We replaced the sliding door in the living room with a garden door – after struggling to get a fridge and stove up the stairs last summer and had a few more trees cut down. Gail and Randy stopped by for a weekend in May and did some amazing rock work – creating a flower bed (the deer are happy), a step and hiding the cabin footings with slate rocks that they gathered from around the cabin. Piece by piece it keeps coming together, although it looks less and less like our original Millennium recycling project.
In the fall, Pat and Deb took a two week holiday driving out to, and touring around, Vancouver Island. We spent the vast majority of our time camping in our old combi-camp tent trailer – and despite the fact that this was one of the wettest September’s on record in Nanaimo (it rained every day but one)– we were able to keep mostly dry and do the hikes and exploring we wanted. We got out of the rain by hitting second hand and thrift stores when needed and we each found some great deals. We were able to get some great visits in with some of Pat’s old work colleagues including a wonderful evening with Lori and Tracey, lunch at a quaint club with Steve and coffee and fresh cookies with Michele. We even had time to tip a couple of pints with Marcus and Jennifer. (all of these were people that Pat had often talked about but this was the first opportunity that Deb got to meet them). We also lucked into a tour and an afternoon on the beach at Tofino with a retired colleague of Deb’s who was just about to head home the next day.
Deb continues to enjoy curling (maybe just bonspieling) This year they were able to use bunny onseys in two Bonspiel – the first they became team “Little Bunny Foo Foo” to fit a nursery rhyme theme and for the Cranbrook Shades of Green, they met the theme of “It’s Only Make Believe” by dressing up the bunny onseys with lingerie to become playboy bunnies. Deb had to use a pair of Keelan’s snow boarding socks to assist her to ‘flesh’ out her chest. They had a fantastic time and hosted a very fun filled Bonspiel. This fall they dressed up as characters from M*A*S*H – Deb was Radar.
Deb joined her family at Loon Lake again this summer for a week of Hand and Foot Canasta, food, bad golf, food, fishing and did we mention good food?! Two fresh fish fries and Deb was even successful at catching all the kinds of fish that are part of her history in fishing – a perch, a couple pickerel and a few jackfish! What a great day.
Twice this summer Deb got out for kayaking weekends with the girls. They went east this year and camped on Lake Koocanusa which was a new place to explore. Kootenay Lake remains Deb’s favorite especially being able to find private beaches but Koocanusa was a pleasant change and there is something to be said for staying put and having the luxury of a tent trailer (Thanks Lisa!)
For Thanksgiving – Deb and Pat drove to Calgary and took over Arlene and Ross’s house to prepare and share turkey dinner with Mick and do some condo hunting. Arlene and Ross left Saturday to Edmonton to go to Cam and Lara’s and to spend time with the newest member of the Breadner clan – ‘Magnolia’, she truly is as beautiful as the flower! Keelan went camping in the snow with Josie (official girlfriend since Sept) and her family up near Golden where they had a lot of fun keeping warm around the fire, driving their cars in the mud bog that was created as the weather warmed and it began to rain, and enjoying many holiday treats including deep fried turkey, home made donuts, cinnamon buns and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They returned for dinner on Monday for turkey left overs (and Deb’s stuffing).
Two weeks later Pat, flew back down to Kentucky – to move the Scion down to the cabin (to eliminate the storage charges in Cincinnati) and to do more renovations / repairs to the cabin. When he arrived, he believed that the cabin was relatively rodent and squirrel free and that his work earlier in the year had been successful. However after he unpacked and was settling down to watch a DVD, he was startled to find a 3 foot snake skin shed underneath the television. After a couple of light nights sleep – he concluded that after taking care of whatever rodents there were, the snake had shed and left. Nearest he could determine the snake was a hognose – not one of the several poisonous snakes that live in the area. After finding and sealing up several rodent / snake entry points, Pat was able to get lights, heater and refrigerator working, renovate the kitchen to make it usable, and with brother-in-law Al’s help repair a host of plumbing leaks. The cabin is now all ready for Deb’s post-retirement trip in April of 2020. Pat and Al were able to do a several day tour of the Bowling Green, Chattanooga and Nashville area – complete with a trip to the Grand Ole Opry. The weather was not as cooperative as it could have been as once again we hit an early cold snap – and had to scrape several inches of snow and ice off the car in Bowling Green.
In our last bit of news we need to go back a year, towards the end of last year, Pat was asked to become the Project Manager to support the Office of the Wet’suwet’en and the tri-parte agreement that was signed with the Federal and Provincial Governments (Pat’s name was put forward by his buddy Shane ). Despite the fact that Pat tried to get them to find someone else and that he could only work on the project until mid-May – – they continued to request his involvement and the work was intriguing. The work turned out to be extremely rewarding and enjoyable for Pat and he was asked to come up and support the staff and chief’s Strategic Planning days. They gave Pat a gift of dried salmon to take on his trip – which he cherished and enjoyed. Jump to the present, at the end of November, a representative from the Office of the Wet’suwet’en contacted Pat by e-mail to see if he would be willing to come up and do some work for them. Although Pat had made it clear that he did not want to return to work (failing at retirement as he has put it) and he had turned down other opportunities – he is currently contemplating this one – because of his experience there and his commitment to what they are trying to accomplish. However he has made it clear that whatever help he might be able to provide – has to end by April so that the two of us can go south to Cadiz and beyond (in time for Crawfish season) when Deb retires to sort out how we are going to spend the next years of our life.
Thank you for once again indulging us by reading our letter and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we love hearing from you. We hope this season finds you with friends and family enjoying each other’s company and sharing memories. Wishing to health and happiness in the New Year!
Merry Christmas and best wishes to all!
Deb and Pat.