SOWERBY'S ROAD
Coming home for Christmas
Memories from past holidays make a homecoming trip more festive

The snow finally stopped and crisp sunshine spilled over Alberta's Bow Lake, creating a stunning winter wonderland. From the cozy dining room of Num-Ti-Jah Lodge, 40 kilometres north of Lake Louise on the Columbia Icefield Highway, I could make out the bluish tinge of Crowfoot Glacier hanging high on a ridge above the snow covered lake.

"If there's a Santa Claus, Num-Ti-Jah would be his home," I thought, as Kate McArthur, a perky, young hostess fresh out of Sauble Beach, Ontario, poured my first coffee of the day.

I surveyed the elegantly rustic dining room. A bizarre collection of animal heads lined the walls ... moose, caribou, antelope. A badger seemed to be eyeing the prairie chicken whose beady eye was fixed on the steamy breakfast Kate had just placed in front of me.

I was relishing the scene when a compelling realization hit me. It was time to go home for Christmas.

I had been on the road from Halifax to Vancouver and back into Alberta for five weeks launching our new book, Sowerby's Road, Adventures of a Driven Mind. Aside from a trio of delinquent idiot lights that entertained me during a frigid weekend crossing the Prairies, my 16-year-old GMC Sierra diesel pickup truck had run the 11,000-kilometre route without a hiccup.

But with Christmas around the corner, I figured it was time to park the truck in Calgary and fly home for the holidays. In Canada, getting home for the Yuletide season can be an adventure in itself, but I have almost always managed to make it home for the festivities.

My oldest daughter, Lucy, nearly missed her first Christmas at home when she was just five days old. Born on December 19, 1983, she was due to be released from the hospital on Christmas Day. With a storm raging, not much was moving on the streets, but the spanking-new 1984 GMC Suburban we had just finished preparing for our shot at the Africa Arctic Challenge speed record was ready for the job.

I took that go-anywhere truck to the hospital in Halifax and picked up my tiny daughter. They gave her to me in a red Christmas stocking with a bell on the toe. I laughed as I secured her into an infant seat and strapped the seat into the passenger Recaro seat complete with 5-point racing harness. You go girl!

"More coffee?" Kate's question snapped me out of my getting-home-for-Christmas daydream and back to Num-Ti-Jah Lodge.

"Sure. Are you going home for Christmas, Kate?"

"No, I'm staying right here." She eyed the festive decorations, the crackling fire in the stone fireplace and the dazzling view out the window.

I thought about my first Christmas away from home. I was 22-years-old, learning to fly a Tutor Jet for the military near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and had missed the flight home. On Christmas Eve, my girlfriend at the time, schoolteacher Lynda Dandurand, announced that her parents had invited my stranded twin brother Larry and I to Christmas dinner.

The dinner was fabulous, featuring Ukrainian dishes that seemed so exotic. The Dandurands treated Larry and I like kin and I have never forgotten their kindness. After all, up until that point I'd considered Christmas a family thing and the Dandurand's invitation to their Christmas dinner seemed a generous and thoughtful gesture to a couple of Maritimers stranded in Moose Jaw.

On Christmas Eve, I rented a Santa suit and gave free rides to everyone. It made me feel like a good person. Making people happy put me in the Christmas mood, especially when a shapely, Bay Street career woman bent my ear about her Santa fantasies.

"If Dad could see me now!" I thought, as I pushed the battered Coronet through the frozen streets of Toronto.

Back at Num-Ti-Jah, I finished my breakfast, bid farewell to Kate McArthur and motored out of the Rocky Mountain paradise to Calgary where Shaw GMC let me park my trusty Sierra right in their showroom.

My flight left late because of a snowstorm in Montreal. More delays in Montreal put me in Halifax after midnight, an hour-and-a-half behind schedule. I found my wife, Lisa, in the airport's short-term parking lot. She had fallen asleep in the cab of the new, fiery red GMC Canyon pickup she had just driven in from Toronto. A Christmas tree was stuffed into the bed.

On the way into town, I thought about my shopping list and all the running around to do before the big day. I wondered who'd show up at our pending Christmas party.

Then I thought about fresh-faced Kate McArthur at Num-Ti-Jah Lodge on Alberta's Icefield Highway. She wasn't home with her family in Sauble Beach, but I'm sure she'll remember her Christmas in paradise for a long time.