Like so many great things, it all started with a song.
More than ten years ago at Christmastime, I wrote a song for my wife Lindsay, who was undergoing what turned out to be successful chemotherapy in London, Ontario, to treat a rare and stubborn molar pregnancy. I tried to play it for her, but with hesitant vocals and a withering acoustic guitar, neither of us had the heart for it, and the song ended up on the shelf, where it collected dust for over a decade.
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Then, just after Thanksgiving this year, our lives were turned upside down. After almost two weeks of worsening headaches, Lindsay convinced me to go to the ER. I expected, at worst, COVID. Instead, a CT scan revealed a 3.8 cm mass deep inside my brain. I prepared myself for the hardest conversation of my life: telling my wife and 2 daughters. When they walked through the door, all I remember were tears, hugs, and pain.
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In the days that followed, I struggled to share the news with family and friends. I was admitted to University Hospital under the care of the London Health Sciences Centre, where a week of tests and imaging led to another blow: the tumour was inoperable — too deep, too risky. ​Instead of surgery, I underwent a stereotactic biopsy: a metal crown fixed to my skull and an image-generated neuro-map guiding a drill into the tumour to retrieve two rice-grain-sized samples.
I must pause here to acknowledge something important: over these weeks, I have been consistently moved by the compassion of everyone working within the London Health System — physicians, nurses, technicians, therapists, volunteers, porters, and more. Their care has been extraordinary.
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After the biopsy, with results expected to take weeks, I was anxiously sent home. And this is where the song re-enters the story.
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Lying awake on my second night home, it hit me: the song needed to live. It needed to be recorded and released. So I scribbled down lyrics, recorded a rough version on my iPad, and sent it to a friend who had been experimenting with AI-generated arrangements. Less than 30 minutes later, he sent back a version that made me smile – really smile – for the first time that I could remember.
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And so: it’s a Christmas song, and it’s a love song. It’s an old song, and it’s also a new song.
Enter: Team Christmas.
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The goal is simple: to create a groundswell of joy, community, and music — to celebrate the season despite hardship; to honour those we love; and, perhaps boldly, to have a great Canadian artist hear this song, sing it, and give it life. Add it to your favourite playlist, share it with your team — and whomever your team may be, consider them drafted onto Team Christmas.
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Throughout this nightmare there have been some very dark places available to me. I’ve visited some of them and learned that nothing good grows there. We are the sum of our choices, and while many aren’t ours to make, we can choose how we respond.
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And I have chosen to live in the light. I have chosen joy. I have chosen, despite the seeming absurdity, to believe in Santa. I don’t know if I believe in free will, but I believe in free won’t — and I won’t live in the dark.
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This hasn’t been easy; no important choice ever is. But it is this choice that is helping me through the hardest chapter of my life.
