On Wednesday, January 25, I joined my last BikeBrampton Zoom meeting. I said my goodbyes to colleagues and friends that I’ve spent many hours within the trenches of City Hall, trying to make the city experience a little better outside the automobile. Many of them were supportive when Toby was diagnosed with cancer. I’m going to miss them dearly.
I’ll try to make it back to Brampton when I’m able. But it could be a while before the twins are big enough to hold themselves upright and can sit in a bicycle trailer or cargo bike.
I received my last byte from Freedom Mobile last night. They don’t offer service in the area where we’ll be moving for Papineau Homes. We’ve switched to Koodo, but I recommend Freedom to anyone where that service is offered.
What should be the last truck has been booked. It’s a big one — 26 feet. I was hoping to have it for a week but it seems that one-way rentals from U-Haul don’t allow this. 48 hours max, so, we’ll have to maximize staging to load the truck as soon as it’s picked up, and hit the road the next day, 24 hours later.
For-profit health care means we don’t have a compelling enough case to keep it public.
By this, I mean that people have become complacent. After all, governments are elected to represent the people.
Even if one argues “broken democracy”, “proportional representation”, etc. It’s people that haven’t cared or been desperate enough to change any of it. Our election turnout in Ontario speaks for itself.
My first update post of the year — So, Happy New Year, everyone!
Christmas 2022
Last Christmas, we were still feeling a little raw at our first Christmas without Toby. We didn’t do much. But with newborn infants this year, we didn’t want to let “doing nothing” become a habit. We had recently purchased Costco memberships in anticipation of our move north and decided that our first purchases were going to be movie theatre confections.
Christmas Eve was kicked off with decorating cookies and watching a holiday classic: Die Hard
On Christmas Day, we were going to watch the Marvel cinematic universe in chronological order — Toby’s favourite — but chickened out for Star Wars instead.
2023
I’ve been taking parental leave since the twins were born in November. January is my last month off before returning to work. In that time, my goal is to get our house ready for sale and move so that our primary residence Mattawa, Ontario with Emily’s parents, before returning to work in February — no pressure!
We’ve already started moving some of our non-essential stuff, and it’s definitely looking like winter up there, compared to the dry ground of Brampton (as of this writing).
This move, when finished, will mean that everyone in the Papineau Homes project will be located close to where we will be building. I expect updates will come more readily at that time, and I already have topics I want to record content for. I’m hoping it’ll be easier to provide context by recording on location.
We’re excited to feel like our move is picking up momentum again.
A lot has happened since November 3, 2022, when we welcomed Enid and Asher into the world. We’re preparing to move north to continue the next steps of Papineau Homes. I’m overdue to write a mega-post, but that’s not happening right now.
Right now, I’m taking a few minutes to honour Toby on the second anniversary of his death on January 2, 2021.
We still feel the weight of his absence and how it continues to resonate in our lives, influencing nearly every decision we make.
We love you, Toby.
We recently had family photos taken with Adela and Sebastian welcoming their new siblings. Here are photos of when they greeted Toby.
