On Christmas day, O’Dowd’s sleigh bells jingle along the farm laneway toward a hushed Emma Rawlins. Clydesdale Dan snorts a frosty greeting. Emma shuffles forward, grateful to escape her cloistered loneliness. Her arcing club foot brushes angel wings in the snow. Snugged and blanketed, she follows the bells into wonderland.

Gary Thomson still remembers sleigh rides of his youth: a hay wagon pulled by Smoky and Thunder along snowy rural roads.