Newsletter: August 2026 – As One Season Ends, Another One Begins
More kindness, more laughter, more looking up at the stars. More long walks, more deep conversations, more art. More music, more delight. More getting lost in a beautiful moment. More ordinary, everyday magic. - Poem found on Gabriola Island by Carol Cares
For the past three years, we’ve been travelling the world and have now lived, at least temporarily, in thirteen different countries. Somewhere along the way, without really planning it, our lives began to unfold in seasons. Spring in one part of the world. Summer somewhere else. Autumn in another country. Winter somewhere completely different. And each time we pack our lives into our luggage to end one season and begin another. That has been our routine.
Sometimes the move is our choice. Other times, immigration rules politely remind us that we’ve enjoyed their country quite long enough. So far, we haven’t applied for a visa that allows us to live in another country for longer than the usual 90 days. As a result, our calendar is no longer divided simply into spring, summer, autumn and winter. There is now a more pressing question each season:
“How many days do we have left?”
Every few months, our lives somehow have to fit back into a couple of suitcases. We say goodbye to people and places that have started to feel familiar, board another plane and begin the process all over again.
There are certainly easier ways to live. But I’m not convinced there are many more interesting ones.
Over time, we’ve come to call what we do “slow travel.”
It’s very different from arriving somewhere for a week, racing through a list of attractions, taking the required photographs and returning home needing a vacation to recover from your vacation.
Instead, we try to actually live wherever we happen to be.
We find a favourite coffee shop.
We shop at the local markets.
We learn which road not to take.
We discover the restaurant where, eventually, the owner recognizes us.
We learn enough of the language to occasionally make ourselves understood — and just enough to be dangerous. Although our Italian is improving consistently thanks to our “language coach” (thanks A.F.!) our Albanian, Gaelic, Africaans and Zulu is very primitive.
During all this “slow travel” process something rather wonderful has happened.
The unfamiliar becomes familiar.
A place that was once simply a destination begins, in some small way, to feel like home. But there is another side to living this way. We always know we’re leaving. And perhaps one of the greatest lessons these past three years have taught me is something rather profound:
Knowing I’m going to leave a place helps me to remember to appreciate being there.
I notice more things. I take the walk. I accept the invitation. I meet the friend for coffee. I stop to watch the sunset instead of assuming there will always be another one.
August gave us the opportunity to do exactly that on Vancouver Island.
As I write this on the final day of August, another season is ending. Soon we’ll point ourselves east — first to Ontario to spend some time with family, then across the Atlantic for a short return to Ireland, and finally, if everything goes according to plan, back to Sicily for the autumn. Sicily in autumn has become one of our favourite parts of our “slow travel” experiences.
Before the suitcases come out again, I wanted to look back at the month I just had. August gave me some wonderful reminders of what really matters.
Mountains. Old friends. Music. Islands. Birthdays. Family. Even an impromptu fishing competition. And more than a few moments that I knew, even while they were happening, were worth remembering.
Hiking with Friends on Vancouver Island
One thing I wanted to do while we were back on Vancouver Island was return to some of the forests and mountains I had appreciated so much when we lived here.
August gave me the chance to squeeze in a couple more hikes — and, even better, to do them with friends.
I returned to Sugarloaf Mountain with my friend R.G. and made another trip to Bald Mountain with M.F. Thanks to both of you for the company, conversation and for joining in on one of our favourite activities: exploring the mountains!
Sugarloaf Mountain sits in the Sooke Hills west of Victoria, surrounded by the kind of coastal forest that makes hiking on Vancouver Island so distinctive. The trail winds through Douglas fir, cedar and arbutus, eventually rewarding the climb with beautiful views across the surrounding hills and toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But like so many Vancouver Island hikes, reaching the viewpoint is only part of the experience. It’s everything along the way. The smell of the forest. The enormous trees. The strange silence that somehow never really seems silent. And tree roots. Lots and lots of tree roots. Vancouver Island apparently believes a hiking trail should occasionally double as an agility test.
Bald Mountain, overlooking Cowichan Lake, offers something quite different. The climb eventually opens onto rocky viewpoints high above the lake, where the forest gives way to sweeping views of water, mountains and seemingly endless layers of Vancouver Island wilderness. Standing up there is a wonderful reminder of just how much wild country still exists on this island. A special treat as my friend and I approached the summit was meeting a couple of other German hikers and giving my friend M.F. the opportunity to have an extended conversation in German with our new hiking friends. It’s something I’ve noticed about hiking as I’ve gotten older. The destination matters less than it once did. What I remember most isn’t necessarily the elevation gained or the kilometres walked. It’s the conversations. Walking beside an old friend for several hours creates a kind of space that everyday life rarely provides. Nobody is checking the clock. Nobody has another appointment in fifteen minutes.
You just walk. And talk.
Families.
Work.
Travel plans.
Mistakes.
Memories.
Life.
Drones. Yes, drones… the conversations can go anywhere!
Perhaps that’s one reason people have been walking together for thousands of years. Sometimes the best conversations happen when nobody is sitting across a table trying to have one.
Reconnecting with Friends and Nature
It’s remarkable how much can happen because of one text message.
In August, I sent a birthday message to a longtime friend from Toronto. A few messages went back and forth. One thing led to another. And suddenly my friend and his daughter were standing on my porch in Victoria ready to spend a couple of days with Courtney and I to spend a bit of time catching up with each other. It is amazing to have friends who alter plans and reroute life in order to spend a bit of time together if we happen to find our paths crossing in the same part of the world.
One of the challenges of travelling as much as we do is maintaining the friendships we’ve accumulated over a lifetime. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to make new friends around the world during the past three years. But we’ve also become increasingly conscious that collecting new friendships shouldn’t mean neglecting the old ones. There is something irreplaceable about sitting across from someone you’ve known for thirty years. Thirty years means you’ve watched several different versions of each other come and go. Hey T.C.! These past thirty years have provided us with SO many crazy stories!
Careers change.
Relationships change.
Priorities change.
Opinions change.
Somehow the friendship remains.
And the stories become legendary!
You don’t need to explain the entire backstory because they were there for much of it. Perhaps that’s the real gift of a longtime friend.
They don’t simply know who you are today. They remember who you were — and they’ve had a front-row seat while you became the person you are now.
Thanks, T.C., for changing your plans, making the detour to Vancouver Island and spending that time with us. Thirty-year friendships are rare and deserve the occasional detour. The craziness of some of our shared experiences sure have become legends! I’m glad we both survived to tell the tales!
David Foster’s 40th Anniversary Celebration
One of August’s biggest surprises happened almost literally in our backyard. Victoria hosted the David Foster 40th Anniversary Celebration, marking four decades since the creation of the David Foster Foundation. David Foster was born in Victoria and went on to become one of Canada’s most successful musicians, composers and producers, working with an extraordinary list of artists during his career. But the evening wasn’t simply about celebrating music.
For forty years, the David Foster Foundation has supported Canadian families whose children require major organ transplants, helping parents with the financial burden so they can concentrate on something infinitely more important — being with their child. Victoria’s Inner Harbour was transformed for the evening, with the Parliament Buildings and waterfront providing a spectacular backdrop.
Courtney and I chose what turned out to be the perfect transportation.
Bicycles.
We rode downtown expecting a crowd. We didn’t expect what appeared to be half of Vancouver Island. Tens of thousands of people filled the Inner Harbour, yet somehow the event was remarkably well organized. Even our bicycles received VIP treatment, with a free bike-storage area beside the Parliament Buildings. We parked the bikes and disappeared into the crowd.
The quality of the performers was extraordinary, but what made the evening particularly memorable was the setting. There aren’t many places where you can watch world-class performers on a stage, turn around to see the illuminated Parliament Buildings and then look across one of Canada’s most beautiful harbours — all without leaving downtown Victoria.
And then came the finale.
A spectacular drone show filled the night sky above the harbour, creating enormous illuminated images overhead… a Canada Goose was formed by the drone lights and “flew” into the water as “real” fireworks blasting to form the wind as the goose landed on the water! Even a diving Killer Whale formed by the drones lit the sky as it jumped out of the water and splashed back into the ocean!
The magical drone show was followed by fireworks exploding above the water, their reflections stretching across the harbour below.
For a few minutes, tens of thousands of people seemed to stop talking and simply look upward. There is something wonderful about moments like that. Thousands of strangers arrive separately. For a little while, they experience exactly the same thing together. Then everyone tries to leave at exactly the same time and you could physically see on the faces of all the people around you how incredibly moving that “magical” evening had affected us all… everyone just shuffled along with the crowd, stunned.
A Trip to Gabriola Island is Magical
Another August highlight was a trip to Gabriola Island to reconnect with a friend who has made the island her home. Thanks, F.L., for spending some time with us! Gabriola is one of the larger Gulf Islands, but it still has that wonderful small-island feeling where life seems to operate at a slightly different speed.
Courtney and I sat down over coffee with F.L. and talked about what it had been like for her to move there permanently and become part of a smaller island community. We also got caught up to speed with some of the drama as it played out after our departure the previous year when we visited the Island. Life sure can have some curveballs for us all, that’s for sure!
It was a conversation that resonated with us. Our friend F.L. has a way of inspiring us as she shares her story.
After three years of slow travel, we’ve become increasingly interested in a question that rarely occurred to us when we travelled the traditional way:
What actually makes somewhere feel like home?
It turns out the answer usually isn’t the size of your house, the number of stores nearby or whether Amazon can find you.
It’s often much simpler.
Friendships.
Familiar faces.
Community.
A place where someone notices when you’ve been away.
Travelling through thirteen countries has shown us that some of the happiest people we’ve met along the way aren’t necessarily living in places offering the greatest number of conveniences.
They’re living somewhere they feel connected. Listening to F.L. talk about Gabriola Island reminded us of that. Maybe choosing where to live isn’t simply about finding the place that offers you the most.
Maybe it’s about finding the place where you discover you need less.
We spent part of the afternoon exploring Gabriola Island’s southeastern coastline. The sandstone shoreline is extraordinary — sculpted by centuries of wind and water into formations, ledges and shapes that sometimes look more like artwork than geology.
Eventually, we headed north for dinner at the Surf Lodge. As dinner was winding down, and as we were finishing our local cider beverages, we noticed something happening outside. The light was changing. Anyone who enjoys photography knows what this means.
Magic hour.
There comes a moment when photography stops being a relaxing hobby and becomes a desperate race against the sunlight. We finished up, jumped into the vehicle and headed toward the campground near the ferry docks, where we walked out toward the point.
And then we stopped. The sky was putting on one of those performances that makes whatever you were talking about five minutes earlier suddenly seem completely unimportant.
We had already witnessed the marvellous drone and fireworks lighting the sky at the David Foster event, this kind of “light show” was just as marvellous but in a completely different way.
The sun dropped toward the horizon. The water caught the changing colours. The Gulf Islands became silhouettes in the distance. And Courtney and I simply stood there.
The colours of the sky left us in awe.
It was one of those sunsets that defies words, which is slightly inconvenient when you’re writing a newsletter. So I’ll let the photograph below finish the story…
A Visit to the Government House for Tea
For Courtney’s birthday, I wanted to do something a little different. Something special without necessarily needing to be extravagant. So we spent part of the afternoon wandering the beautiful grounds of Government House in Victoria, followed by tea and dessert at Rudi’s Tea Room.
The Government House estate is one of those places that somehow makes you forget you’re still in the middle of a city. We wandered through the gardens, taking our time among the flowers and enormous trees, with beautiful views stretching toward the Olympic Mountains in the distance. But it was the rose garden that stopped us.
There is something quite remarkable about actually taking the time to smell the roses. That was the true birthday gift for Courtney, as she told me she did not want me to buy her any flowers… so instead I found a place where we could spend a couple of hours smelling and photographing them instead.
These are gardens that are beautiful to look at, the kind that inspire us just to be able to experience their beauty. These are the gardens that you can smell before you reach them. The fragrance of hundreds of roses seemed to hang in the warm summer air. It was almost impossible to walk through without stopping every few feet.
At Rudi’s Tea Room, tea arrived accompanied by two wonderfully indulgent desserts. Courtney chose the carrot cake. I chose the apple cheesecake. Sharing was theoretically possible…. These are the kind of desserts you just want to gobble up yourself. We sat, talked and enjoyed the surroundings without any particular reason to hurry.
Perhaps that was the best birthday gift of all. After three years of travelling, we’ve learned that a memorable day doesn’t necessarily require an exotic destination or an elaborate plan. Sometimes you simply need a beautiful garden, someone you love, a pot of tea and a dessert sufficiently good enough to test the limits of generosity.
The Secret Fishing Spot
There was one more August gathering I was looking forward to, and in some ways, it became the one I’ve thought about the most as I returned to Ontario.
My dad passed away a year ago. Mom wanted to bring the family together and take us somewhere that had been special to the two of them.
A fishing spot. But not just any fishing spot. Their fishing spot.
I’m deliberately not going to tell you exactly where it is because apparently every family fishing spot requires the word “secret” in front of it. Mom and Dad had spent many quiet hours there together.
Fishing. Talking. Joking… always LOTS of jokes!
Doing absolutely nothing particularly remarkable.
And perhaps that’s precisely why those hours became so important. Fishing carries its own memories for me. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of fishing with my Dad. As a kid, there was something magical about staring at that little float on the water, waiting for the slightest movement. One tiny bob and suddenly your heart started racing. Surely this was it. The enormous fish. The one people would talk about for decades. Usually it wasn’t. But every cast came with possibility.
There was another reason this particular place mattered. The last photograph we have of my Dad was taken there. In it, he’s holding a very large fish he had just caught. He looks happy. And now, a year later, the family was returning to that exact same place.
The weather couldn’t have worked out any better. The rainy morning suddenly transformed into a light drizzle and then a pause in the rain just as we arrived. One of those days I could hear my dad saying his typical line which was, “Nice, bright sunny day. Birds are singing. Children are playing.” Some memories will never fade. My Dad provided many of them to us all over the years. It sure is interesting to see how he is still providing for my Mom even after his passing. That’s my Dad.
At this family event, gradually everyone arrived. Fishing rods came out. Tackle boxes opened. Worms were sacrificed. And at some point, without any formal announcement, our peaceful memorial family fishing day became a competition. I don’t remember anyone officially saying: “The competition has begun.”
It just happened.
I began moving from rock to rock looking for the perfect fishing spot. The bluegill below seemed to know exactly what I was doing. I swear they could see me. I supplied worms. They ate them. Every cast followed roughly the same pattern.
Nibble. Nibble. Gone.
New worm.
Nibble. Nibble. Gone again.
Somewhere beneath the surface, I imagine word was spreading that the buffet was open. Eventually, persistence prevailed. I caught one. Then another. Two bluegill.
Admittedly, neither fish was likely to result in a commemorative plaque.
But somewhere during all of this — hopping across the rocks, watching the water, hearing everyone talking and laughing around me — I stopped for a moment just to take it all in.
I looked across the water and I thought about my Dad. A year earlier, he had been right here. He had stood on these rocks. Looked across this same water. Put a worm on a hook. Dropped his line into this same fishing hole. Waited for that same little tug. It struck me how strange places can be after someone is gone. Everything looks exactly the same. And yet nothing is quite the same. The rocks hadn’t changed. The water hadn’t changed. The fish were still there. The water was still so relaxing. Our family was gathered around the shoreline. But one person was missing.
Except… in another way, he wasn’t.
I don’t think I was the only one who felt it. Dad was woven through the entire day. He was in Mom bringing us back there. My mom brought his photo with her, the last known photo we have of him. He was in the stories. He was in the laughter. He was in my childhood memories every time I cast the line. He was in that last photograph. And he was in the simple fact that all of us were standing together in a place we probably wouldn’t have been standing if it hadn’t been for him.
That’s the strange thing about losing someone.
Their physical absence can sometimes make their presence in everything else more noticeable. For a few hours, it felt as though Dad had managed to get the whole family together for one more fishing trip. And then there was the competition. As the afternoon went on, something became increasingly obvious. Nobody was catching anything remotely close to the fish Dad was holding in that photograph. Not me. Not anyone in our family… except a young visitor we had with us, an 11 year old named Anthony.
When this kid saw the photo of my Dad, he exclaimed, “Wow! That’s a once-in-a-lifetimer fish!”
We shared some of our snacks with this kid, and that’s what probably kept him with us all afternoon. He’s the one who caught the biggest fish of the day. But still when he looked at the photo of my Dad he’d exclaim, “Man oh man! That’s a one-in-a-lifetimer fish!”
We had returned to Dad’s fishing spot. We had brought the family. We had brought the rods. We had supplied what seemed like half the bluegill population with a wormy-lunch. And somehow…
Dad was still with us.
I couldn’t help but smile at that. Somehow it seemed exactly right.
But the real prize that afternoon had nothing to do with fish. It was seeing the family together. I had time with my nieces, which meant a lot to me. And there was another important family event. I got to meet “the boyfriend.” He had flown in from Alberta for just 24 hours specifically to attend the family gathering at the secret fishing spot. I have to give him credit. Flying across provinces to spend 24 hours with your girlfriend’s extended family while they evaluate your fishing ability is true dedication. Either that or he’s crazy.
But since he can bait his own hook, he’ll fit into our family perfectly.
Whether he knew this was an audition beforehand remains unclear. But he survived.
As the day wound down, I found myself hoping this wasn’t a one-time gathering. I hope we come back. I hope the rods come out again. I hope somebody brings too many worms. I hope the competition becomes increasingly serious for no sensible reason. I’ve come to realize that family traditions don’t necessarily have to be traditions that have existed for generations.
Sometimes a tradition begins with one simple sentence: “We should do this again next year.”
And then you do.
Maybe that’s one of the nicest ways we can remember someone we’ve lost. We can’t recreate the past. I don’t think we’re supposed to. But we can take something they loved and carry it forward. We can return to their places. Tell their stories. Laugh about the things they would have laughed about. And occasionally try to beat their fishing record.
Dad wasn’t physically standing beside us that afternoon. But I believe all of us felt him there. In a way, he had brought us together again. And after all the fishing rods had been packed away, the worms had been thoroughly redistributed to the local fish population, and the family competition was over, one fact remained indisputable:
Dad was still the family fishing champion.
A year later, without even showing up, he beat all of us. I have a feeling he would have enjoyed that. Especially on such a “nice, bright sunny day.”
Another Season Ends
And just like that, August is over. Another season has passed. Looking back, I’m happy to say I didn’t simply let this one pass by. I did the best thing I could do, I took time to notice it, to show up and enjoy it. Soon the suitcases will come out again. Everything will be folded, weighed, rearranged and eventually rearranged again because the laws of physics apparently dictate that two suitcases can contain almost everything we own — just never everything we want to take.
As Courtney and I have adopted our new phrase when departing, we say “Arrivederci” to Canada (which is, “See you later”) as we prefer not to use the word “goodbye” because saying ‘bye is never good.
Next, a quick stop in Ireland.
Then Sicily for another 3 months.
Another season.
Another country.
Another temporary home.
When we began travelling three years ago, I think we believed the great reward would be seeing the world. And that has certainly been part of it.
But increasingly, I think the greater reward has been learning how to notice the world.
August reminded me of that. It was there while walking through a forest beside an old friend. It was there when a thirty-year friendship crossed the country because of a birthday text. It was there among thousands of strangers looking upward at fireworks over Victoria Harbour. It was there over coffee with a friend who had found her new home on Gabriola Island. It was there in the smell of roses while walking through a garden with Courtney on her birthday. It was there in a sunset when we almost missed the ferry.
Perhaps most of all, it was there beside a quiet fishing hole where someone we loved was missing — and yet somehow seemed to be everywhere.
Maybe that’s what a good life eventually comes down to.
Not accumulating as many destinations as possible. But being present enough to recognize the moments that matter while we’re still inside them.
Take the hike. Send the birthday message. Make the detour. Have tea in the garden. Go fishing with your family. Watch the sunset. Enjoy the time, because someday without knowing it at the time, we will do some ordinary thing for the last time.
That’s not necessarily a sad thought. Maybe it’s simply a reason to pay attention. Knowing that we’re always leaving has become one of the unexpected gifts of this strange life we’ve chosen. It reminds us to appreciate where we are while we’re still there.
There will always be another destination.
Another flight.
Another season.
Another sunset.
There will never be another time like the present one, August 2026 with friends and family.
I was speaking with a new Italian friend I have about this idea of “being motivated” in life. This person is from Sicily, and when he speaks in English he uses very “flowery” language. He told me, “Paolo, Sicilians don’t need no motivation. We Sicilian! We have dedication.’
