I declared a year long celebration to commemorate Donna and my fifty years of marriage. November 6, 2026, will be our 50th anniversary. I don’t believe that one day on its own is all that special, so we are celebrating a year-long party, travelling, seeing friends and doing special things together. As has been our practice, we will also celebrate by being apart as well, to pursue our different passions - me as a newly energized photographer and a budding author. Donna’s passion as a quilter.

We both believe that a day on the calendar is just another day. I believe every day is special! Every day is a good day to celebrate - as a rule, I won’t buy flowers or chocolates because the day on the calendar says February 14th, it’s Valentine’s Day, now go out and buy someone flowers and let them know they are special. That’s something you should appreciate them 365 and a quarter days each year, not because of an arbitrary day that seems to have been created by florists and chocolatiers. In keeping with that theme, we/I are celebrating my first full year of retirement, and from October 2025 to December 31st, 2026, we're partying on, no holds barred.

As a result of a no-holds-barred decision, we chose to travel unshackled. These past 12 days, it’s been in British Columbia. We chose to visit long-term friends and relatives, whom we haven’t seen in far too long.

Why Donna wanted to go on this trip:

The primary reason we are both on this trip is to see old dear friends and family that we have not seen in years. Donna hasn’t seen Shirley Young in maybe twenty years, give or take? They had been next-door neighbours since they were born. Their fathers had been lifelong friends since their teenage years. They eventually bought five-acre parcels of land next to each other, backing onto the Bronte Creek. They eventually built houses and converted a barn into a workshop where they invented and built things - ever heard of a toilet paper roller with ball bearings?

Donna also has several cousins in the west, and whoever was available, we would try to work in a visit and break bread with them. This time, our scheduling has allowed us to visit with Carol Tanney, her paternal cousin.

Donna would move to BC in a heartbeat if our families were not in the Mississauga area. After visiting here a half dozen times, it wouldn’t be a hard place to take. She loves the natural, rugged beauty and the pace of life of the country, not Vancouver, but the smaller places.

Why I wanted to go on this trip:

For me, it is Jean Roux, who worked at the same company as me. On many occasions, Jean showed me the way to my next level, which led to my business decisions. More importantly, Jean is like a brother in arms, we are both passionate about what we do ~ photography, food, the arts, life and any subject you can think of. While we appreciate and celebrate the things we have in common, we’re not always on the same spot on the spectrum. Jean is more of a free spirit who has ridden a motorcycle the length of South America, all the way to Patagonia. By himself. That has never appealed to me to tackle. As a result, I’m more like a vanilla kind of guy - slow, methodical and boring is good for me, I’m ok with that. If given the opportunity to do the same trip, I wouldn’t. Jean lives life like a hot pepper- since I don’t know the whole pepper range, it would be hotter than a ghost pepper! The beauty of our relationship is that we celebrate and appreciate those differences.

Jean Roux avoids the traditional tourist traps and prefers to live in the communities he visits to really get deep into them. I, not rightly nor wrongly, choose a slightly more touristy escape, but truly appreciate the getting deeper part; I do not have the luxury of time to take two or three months to do so. As a result, I have leaned on Jean’s experience and even taken advantage of it. Especially this trip.

Dawn Martinez is another reason for taking the route we did. I met Dawn for all of five minutes on the highway in 2014. We were driving in the middle of torrential rain. She was fishing in the rain. That brief encounter, enabled by Facebook, has blossomed into a long-distance remote friendship.

The other reason, photography of mountains and waterfalls. Early spring would bring us a combination of abundant water from the spring melt and snowmelt from the mountains. I have also started connecting with strangers to do their portraits, going to far-off places, which has given me opportunities to meet strangers doing predominantly regionally based activities. Not many lobstermen live in Ontario.

The following description of the trip was based on the daily highlights I shared on Facebook. I did not have the luxury of editing time for more than a handful of the hundreds of pictures taken daily. The blessing of the technology is that I am more able now than ever before. I love my iPhone camera and have been using it to shoot wide-angle photos and, specifically, video. The issue is that I am slower on the wordsmithing part. It is not as refined as my photography skills, which have 55 years of practice behind them. Come with us on this marvellous adventure.