A Christmas with cards

Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year in 2026.

Christmas season in 2025 means a return to Christmas cards, something I enjoy every year. Through the decades, sending a personal thought in my own handwriting to the folks I like to acknowledge in this traditional way every year has been a rite of the Christmas season.

The 2025-26 hockey season, of which I am in the midst as a pick-up hockey goaltender is now my 63rd in the game. My Streetsville people, more or less my own age group, allow me to enjoy the game without a long drive while we play at Vic Johnston Arena, a venue I often used as an MPP for my family skate events and for other community celebrations, such as Chinese New Year.

After public life, I have found being a meeting chair enjoyable. There’s nothing like the skills and procedural experience one gets in the Legislature to make handling an annual general meeting for a trade or professional association smooth and on-time.

Christmas cards were a lot of fun while I was elected. We did an annual special photo shoot and produced our own Christmas cards every year. The visual attraction to the recipients was always our cats, and secondarily Andrea. I seemed to be along for the ride. To my astonishment, numerous people not merely told me, but also showed me, that they collected our cat Christmas cards. As a past photographer myself, I was fussy in how I instructed the photographer to get the pictures from year to year. I wanted the image to be up-close and personal, to make eye contact from the card with the recipient. Even the Toronto Star occasionally featured our Christmas card in their annual round-up of what greetings elected Members of the Legislature distributed.

To this day, more than six years after my last day of service in public life, people still remark on those cards, and ask about the cats. The last of those iconic cats depicted on our cards, Merlin, passed away in January of 2023, just 13 days short of what would have been his 20th birthday. Today, Andrea and I have Kayla, who was born in 2021 and came to us as a ‘rescue cat’ a couple of months after we lost Merlin.

So, if we don’t get to you on the telephone in time for Christmas, and you know our number, simply pick up the phone and call us. Here’s wishing you lots of Christmas cheer, good food and happy times during the Christmas season and into the 2025 New Year.