Brown-John: A Christmas Tree Story

I cannot abandon my passion for real Christmas trees, and each year we decorate our late live tree with hundreds of unique decorations acquired in our round-the-world travels.

My love of real decorated Christmas trees has deep roots.

Many of my best early years were spent living in a then-rural area of British Columbia. At the time, our home just east of Vancouver was still a place where small farms and cows, pigs and plenty of chickens were common.

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Our house, constructed by my carpenter dad, was located on a relatively main road running between down-the-hill sawmill town Port Moody and more distant major centre New Westminster.

Our house looked across farms to heavily wooded Burnaby Mountain.

My father specialized in cement work like house foundations and retaining walls. Always, it seemed, he worked in the mud. Usually by B.C.’s soggy November he’d be laid off for winter and we then more or less managed on his small........

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