February 2026 - Nuggets - Staff Christmas Dinner

I know! It’s a bit late to be talking about Christmas here in the middle of February, but with only one e-newsletter a month, and with last month’s Nuggets dedicated to our Christmas Gala, here we are. This event was unique enough that I thought it was worth sharing. Our support staff at RE/MAX Garden City Realty Inc. are wonderful. 365 days a year, they work behind the scenes making us look wonderful. Even when the office is closed, they man a help desk and provide back-up support for our agents. They care. And while they are there for us all year round, there are only two official days we have the opportunity to let them know they are appreciated. The one being Administrator’s Day, and the other being our support staff Christmas dinner. Officially, Administrators' Day is held in April, but because we have opted for an outdoor event, we hold it in June. It takes place in our (Wayne and Debbie’s) backyard. And since we have been doing some travelling lately, it is themed. We’ve had Mexican, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Caribbean, Turkish and more. But his past year, we were heading off on a Mediterranean cruise the first week of June, and since May was too cool for a backyard party, we elected to go out to a restaurant instead. So, to make up for the lack of international culture on Administrators' Day, we decided that at our Christmas dinner, we would provide Christmas stockings for each of our staff, and stuff them with mementoes of our overseas trips. Off we went to travel and shop. On Mykonos Island, Greece, we discovered a collection of rubber ducks. Apparently, it’s a bit of a European thing to collect stylised rubber ducks. Machine gun toting ducks. Gamer ducks. Captain Marvel ducks, in fact, in the old city of Rome, we came across a duck store. Totally devoted to stylised ducks. In Santorini, we found some great embroidered pillows. Then at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, we found a shop specializing in Turkish Delight, and had them custom-fill 14 boxes. The Grand Bazaar, by the way, is an amazing place with between 4,000 and 5,000 shops under one roof. In Rhodes, we found embroidered tote bags to carry to market. One place we stopped, Malta, we went to the town of Valletta, a town completely encased in limestone, buildings, walls, everything. There wasn’t much shopping but we did find one shop with decorative candles encased in, you guessed it, limestone. That was a challenge hauling 14 limestone candles back to the bus, the ship, the shuttle, the plane and home. In Africa, among other things, we found beautiful pewter salad forks engraved with a wild animal motif and entitled ‘crawling leopard’. Made in Cape Town and marketed through a shop in Victoria Falls and also in Johannesburg. Although it seems like the stone hippos were the big hit from the African segment of the gifts. Each of the staff had a personalized Christmas sock stuffed full of travel items. And beside each sock was a banana box to put the collection once they were extracted and unwrapped. As is our custom, we met at Coppola’s for dinner. They had the tables set up in a square, so we essentially all sat together. One by one, we went around the table where each staff member would select the next gift to be unwrapped, and everyone would unwrap together. 18 gifts, 28 minutes. I don’t know if that’s a land speed record, but it’s close. Next came a time of eating, kibitzing and celebrating the season. Typically, gift giving happens so quickly at Christmas. Stockings, breakfast, then gifts under the tree. It seems like it just starts and it’s over. So, a tradition at the Quirk household is to hold one gift back till after dinner. That way, it isn’t over quite so quickly. Well, we adopted that tradition for our staff Christmas dinner, and as they were putting their coats on, they each received one last gift. One final time to let them know they are special. And they are.