Northern Tropics

Merry Christmas from Whitehorse

This Christmas letter thing gets harder each year. Actually, what gets harder is trying to remember just how to get this onto the blog. I remember that it’s more complicated than would make interesting text for a reader. I remember too that if you click on a picture you can see a larger version of it.

So here it is. Much later than usual. Pete and Gil are already here and Christmas and all its glorious fun is done. We hope yours was a pleasure and that your new year will be rewarding.

Sandra’s Year

I must have mentioned last year the move Sandra’s beloved Pleasemum store made from a smokey little hole in the wall next to the Discovery Bar to a grand new, brighter than right, larger than necessary barn down the street. Anyway, the turmoil of the move cured her “love of retail” and she left the service of kiddy-coat land before the snow melted.

Thus unemployed, she employed herself with Nana-duties, two or three trips South, quilting projects and the fussy attendance of the garden boxes I built her.

And don’t let me forget Bong Sun who is a lovely young Korean woman who boarded here the first four months of the year. We both enjoyed her charming personality and interesting insights into things.

In the fall Sandra attended Yukon College to re-acquaint herself with the vagaries of job hunting and computer stuff. She’s finished with that and will, after the annual visit to her mother in Florida, search out suitable employment. Have yourself a guess what that might be and read next year’s message to the answer.

This shelf Sandra designed and I built out of junk left kicking around the house.

Doug’s Year

I’m still employed 12 hours/week during the school year at the Individual learning Centre. It allows me to play hockey Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with Hank Karr and some other old guys who make themselves free those times. We entered the Whitehorse Old-timers’ Tournament (in the B-division) and were undefeated. We won a nice hat.

January and February was devoted to being Caliban in Moving Parts Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” It turned out to be quite a challenge to play a teenage monster but a full mask and a large woolen blanket covered a lot of the ravages of the past 60 years.

Much of the rest of the year I spent coughing with a cold that wouldn’t let go. Slo pitch season turned out to be cold and wet. I used a whole package of hotshots just keeping my hands warm enough to grip the ball.

Nevertheless the team travelled to Moncton to play in the Canada Senior Games. It was a fine time and our first four games were annoying examples of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We finally beat Saskatchewan in the rain with the temperature at 15 degrees: good weather for us but too wet and cold for them.

Cough or no cough, I was unable to resist auditioning for the part of Dr. Rance, the mad psychiatrist, government inspector, in Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw.” It was described as a sex-farce and I remember fondly those light-hearted comedies with Len and Norm and the ladies at the Besty Westy Cobourg. Butler turned out to be about some young girl’s nightmare and to make any sense of Dr. Rance I had to play him as a child molester lunatic. It was funny enough and we sold out almost all of the fourteen shows after previews. It follows that nearly 1000 strangers must have seen me as Dr. Rance and may explain the odd looks I get from time-to-time at the various events we attend.