2025 started with a spectacular three week visit to Madeira.
We visited because we wanted to experience the famous Levada hiking trails we had read so much about and get away from the cold Collingwood weather in January. Somewhere warm but not hot, with comfortable hiking weather. With a daytime average temperature of around 16 º celsius in January, we felt that would be perfect weather to hike the UNESCO-listed forests of Madeira.
Dubbed the Island of Eternal Spring, Madeira is the perfect place to reconnect with nature and experience the extraordinary.
Madeira is blessed with multiple micro-climates, due to steep mountains and valleys. Those mountains, coupled with warm Atlantic air currents coming from several directions, including Africa, make the climate different in every corner of the island on any given day. However, there are a few certainties; the south side of the island has much lower rainfall and is always warmer and sunnier. Villages such as Ribeira Brava, Calheta, or Ponta do Sol, are sunny almost all year round.
That is why we chose to stay in Ponto do Sol.
You can read the entire post here – Three Weeks in Madeira.
The Dedication of the Yep Family Home in Montreal’s Chinatown
In March, Yim’s ancestral home was designated a Heritage Building in Montreal’s Chinatown, thanks to the collective efforts and activism of Jean-Philippe Riopel, who bought the home, our cousin Sandy Yep, Karen Cho, the director of Big Fight in Chinatown and the JIA Foundation.
Over a weekend, generations of the Yep family from across the country gathered for the dedication and I watched over two days as they reacquainted themselves in the home they all grew up in. It was a magical weekend for everyone involved.
On one of our first dates many years ago, Yim and I were walking through Chinatown when she stopped in front of the window she is standing at below and said, “I was born in that room”. Being able to share this weekend all these years later as a member of the family was pretty cool and I got to enjoy watching as Yim, Patti, Sheri, Stanley and Sandy got to go down to the basement, where they all played as children, and which they had not visited in decades and recall the stories they all shared as memories.
If you are visiting Montreal, the building is now officially open to the public to enjoy the interpretive displays which outline Yim’s Great Grandfather Charlie Yep’s arrival, his early struggles and his lasting influence on Chinatown. It’s a storyline that makes me wonder about the strength and courage it must have taken to land in a strange country and have to fight for your rights in the early 1900’s and the narrative of the displays tell the story very well.
Cody and Natalie get married in Montreal.
Yim’s son, Cody and Natalie got married this May in what was certainly the most unique wedding I have ever attended.
From our home base in Chinatown, a small group of us set off on foot along St. Urbain Street, fully dressed in wedding attire, to the chapel at the Palais de Justice building, where we were funnelled through a series of security checks before entering the building.
The ceremony itself, while short, was officiated by a good natured Justice of the Peace who enjoyed, and seemingly encouraged, Cody’s sense of humour. There’s no doubt that he is a one of a kind guy. His spontaneity was infectious and he had all of us smiling, but more importantly, Natalie was beaming the entire time. Before we knew it, they were married.
The real treat was later on at the reception which Cody hosted dressed as Lo Pan, the mystical, curse-bound villain from the 1986 cult classic film Big Trouble in Little China, who regains his physical form by marrying a green-eyed woman – Natalie – who was elegantly dressed in Green.
It certainly was original and family and friends flew in from across the country and even across the Atlantic to attend.
We are very happy for them and wish them a lifetime of happiness together.
Summer 2025
Back home in Collingwood, June was a busy month as Yim performed a Ballet Recital with Claire and April, choreographed by Sharon Fleet of Fleet Wood Dance, at the historic Meaford Hall. The trio performed a beautiful routine to the music of Bruce Hornsby’s “That’s just the way it is”. I see the work Yim puts in annually and have since learned that Ballet is quite a grueling art form and it makes me very proud when I watch her on stage performing. She is both graceful and elegant.
It also marked my 70th Birthday and we celebrated with Tom and Beth spending the weekend and enjoying the day with a small group of friends.
Then while Yim began practicing for her Burlesque performance in October, I continued to spend a couple of hours a day riding the trails for our groceries, a fun little challenge I gave myself in an effort to enjoy the outdoors, get some exercise and lead a more sustainable life. The older I get, the more important being outside daily has become to me.
Over those three years, I have logged just about 12,000 kilometres on my bike, which translates into a reduction of my carbon footprint by 3.25 tons of carbon dioxide.
Being retired and not in a hurry on most days for anything other than having myself a good day now, I can honestly say that this simple daily routine not only shelters me from the ever increasing traffic in our small town, it also keeps me grounded – just an hour a day along these trails is invigorating.
In October, Yim preformed a mesmerizing silk fan routine to the music of Lindsey Stirling’s Crystalize at her annual Student Showcase, presented by Kat’s Meow Beautiful Burlesque at The Simcoe Theatre in Collingwood and this year, the show was by far their best. Yim has been dancing with them for several years now and I have been able to watch all the girls, who steadily improve both their dance routines and confidence levels, then strut their stuff as they try out new routines. These ladies are very brave and the shows are a couple of hours of pure escapism. Kat Salvador is a very funny, very sexy Mistress of Ceremony.
The day after this years show, I surprised Yim for her birthday with a dinner at The Mandarin with the surprise being her brother Andy and his kids, Jaclyn, Jessica and Jonathan traveling up from Toronto to join us. It was a funny day because we left far too early to do everything we wanted to on our car ride to Barrie and ended up driving slowly around the neighbourhood while Yim did her best to try and guess where we were going and why we couldn’t simply get there a little early rather than just after 5 PM, the time I had told her brother and kids to be there by… I needed them to be seated and not in the lobby when we arrived.
Then when we got into the Mandarin, she said, “See. I told you it was The Mandarin”. We walked in and I said, “Just a minute” and went over to talk to the hostess at the front door to ask where Andy was sitting. Then Yim started on me again, “Why aren’t they showing us to our seats? Where are you going?”, and when we got to the table, she didn’t even see her family for a second because she was so preoccupied trying to figure out what I was doing and then realized that I had surprised her. It was pretty funny to me…
A few weeks later in November, we celebrated the 100th day of the newborn son – Logan – of our niece, Jillian, and her husband, Andrew, in accordance with Chinese tradition. The 100-day celebration (百日宴, bǎirì yàn) marks a baby’s survival through the early vulnerable period and is meant to symbolize longevity, health, and prosperity with a family feast, blessings, red-coloured items and gifts of red envelopes for the baby’s good fortune.
In December, Yim’s cousin – our cuz – Sandy Yep officially retired, and the event featured a very cool traditional Lion Dance, which is another important Chinese tradition for bringing good luck, prosperity, and protection, as it is believed to drive away evil spirits. This dance culminates with the eating of a head of lettuce by the lion, which Yim dangled to tempt the Lion towards her. After “eating” the lettuce, which contains a hidden red envelope within it, the Lion spits out the remnants to symbolize spreading good fortune throughout the community.
Food, drink and Karaoke then broke out for a steady three hours of mingling. It was a really fun night with another side of Yim’s family, and an exceptionally diverse crowd of filmmakers, photographers, drummers, ultimate frisbee players and Kung Fu teachers.
So it was a very Chinese oriented year for us.
Grace
This year we also spent quite a bit of time with Grace, the daughter of our friends Gillian and Joe. It’s been fun for both of us to watch her grow up. She changes so much from year to year.
She is very self sufficient little girl and is quite happy playing by herself when she visits. She also loves being outside, particularly when we get out a ball that she can punt around and developed a habit of diving, as in recovering a fumble, for any ball that either Yim-Yim (her nickname for Yim), or I are chasing around in the backyard at the same time she is and pulling it in under her for protection. It’s pretty cute.
She enjoys walks in the woods near our house and we try and get her out and into them several times during the summer. This year, we took her down to watch the salmon run so she gets to learn about the local wildlife while developing an appreciation for nature. At least I like to think she is. I did get her to help me weed the garden this summer 🙂
Grace has also developed the habit of blaming whatever goes wrong on me, as in, Yim may ask her, “What happened to your other sock Grace”? Her response: “Steve took it”. I consider it a sign of affection and leave it as that.
Needless to say, Grace idolizes Yim Yim.
Samara, Costa Rica
So that was our year to date. Costa Rica – Here We Come.
In between all that, we also managed to plan a two month trip to Costa Rica in January and February 2026 and are very much looking forward to it. As much as I love Canada, anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of winter and would much rather be too hot than even a little bit cold. I don’t like the cold and I don’t much care for being inside so, Costa Rica, here we come.
It’s worth reading my post about the trip because it outlines in detail some of the stuff we plan on doing. The Ostional Turtle Reserve alone is reason enough to read it.
That’s it for the year. From now until the end of the year, Yim and I intend to have a quiet time around Collingwood. We’ll spend some time with a few friends for dinner, open some gifts, cook some new dinners, visit Andy in Toronto sometimes during Christmas, come home and pack.
We are both healthy and enjoying our lives. Fitness, dance, cycling, nutrition, cooking, travel and of course, family remain the focus in our lives and that feels right to us. It also keeps us quite busy, especially when the summer rolls around and we have our gardens in full harvest mode.
We are grateful. And I mean that sincerely. I am grateful. I don’t know everyone who might be reading this but those of you who I know personally, I am grateful for all of you for being in my life.
So when I take a day to sit down and reflect in order to write an annual review like this, I can help but think…
Make sure you all have your own stories to tell…
Happy New Year.
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