If it had been up to my dad, Peter, he would have spent every New Year’s Eve watching his favourite ice hockey team, the Montreal Canadiens, lose another game.
“Played like donkeys, the lot of them,” he’d mutter before heading up the stairs to read the crime novel he got in his Christmas stocking.
Unfortunately for him, in those days the quaint custom of first footing, imported from Scotland and Northern England, was still practised in Canada.
“What’s first footing?” asked Audrey, our eldest grandchild.
“It’s when you hop on only one foot! I’m a good hopper! Watch!” said her little sister, Eleanor, bouncing wildly down the hallway, leaving Vegemite fingerprints here and there en route.
“First footing isn’t hopping,” I explained. “It’s an old tradition in some countries. The…
