Growing up at our old studio on Old School Road, James, April and I, often had to wait for the school bus outside our home. We were all in the French Immersion program and had to be bused to our schools (at least before high school, after which my parents drove me each day). Waiting inside the studio on a cold winter morning is one of the things I remember most clearly from my childhood. The studio had an old furnace system, with long exposed hot water pipes, perfect for holding onto and warming up your fingers. We'd stand there by the front window's, waiting for the bus to pull up. If we had time, one of my father's favourite things to do was bake us potatoes in the fireplace. We'd wrap them in tinfoil and set them amid the coals, eagerly waiting to cut them in half and see the steam rising out of them. With just a little salt and pepper, safely stored away in a cupboard just for this reason (and sometimes a little olive oil), we'd devour our warm snacks before setting off to school.

We still bake potatoes in our wood fireplace, and on a cold winter day, when the wind cuts through you and you feel that dampness down in your core, for me there's nothing quite as heartwarming and filling.

~Peter