My son was nine when my grandmother died and left me a small inheritance.
A war bride who came to Canada in 1948, my grandmother spent most of her life here. But to me, she was always the embodiment of British tastes, manners and sensibilities.
Using the money that she’d left me to take my son to her hometown of Canterbury was the best way I could think of to celebrate her life.
Photos from that trip – which eventually expanded to include a train ride through the Chunnel to Paris – plus pictures from a trip to the Canadian Rockies for a family wedding, and a 20th anniversary celebration in Thailand and Borneo, were some of the most treasured snapshots I took over a three-year period.
But in the digital world, they became stubbornly difficult to enjoy, share and sometimes even to find. They quickly became buried in what felt like a virtual shoebox, along with other good photos, SO many bad photos and a fair number of the what-is-that-anyway variety.
I wasn’t inclined to print them, so decided to experiment with a photo book.
That 2012 venture kicked off what has become my favourite annual hobby: building a photo book to reflect on the year and capture my memories.
Every year, I spend my Christmas holiday spare time re-living the previous 12 months. I wander through photos gathered from various family phones, reminiscing, selecting, rejecting and, narrowing down, in an attempt to create a collection that tells the story of our year.
Graduations, birthdays, holidays and special events form the backbone in most years. But the books also narrate the evolution of our real life -- our friends, my garden, the arrival of our cat, the moving van carrying my son to his first apartment, the sweaty team selfie at our Friday night softball league.
I’m forced to take an introspective journey through the year. What really mattered? What highlight will I care about when I flip through the pages in the years to come?
More than a decade of photo books takes up only a few inches on my shelf, but they provide immediate, tangible and enduring access to memories; to times, places and people that I don’t want to forget.
In a world where vast blocks of virtual storage are filled with ever-growing collections of photos that are buried thousands of swipes below the surface, the humble photo book offers as a way to tame the digital whirlwind.
Why not start your own photo book this year? It's a great way to commemorate the last year, or have a great start to 2024!