Christmas with Kristi Gordon

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

Credit: Curtis Comeau Photography

Global BC News Hour’s senior meteorologist welcomes us into her home this holiday season

The first thing you notice about Kristi Gordon is her down-to-earth nature. Her let’s-get-real vibe not only comes across when she met me at the door of her home—all smiles and wearing a T-shirt, jeans and not a speck of makeup—but from the moment we started to chat.

“I’m not a natural at-home mother—I find this stuff really tough, it’s not my thing,” she laughs. With her five-month-old son Braden grinning at me from her hip, Gordon tells me she is enjoying motherhood the second time around (her son Jordan is four now) but finding the at-home portion while on maternity leave until next June somewhat challenging. Some moms find more balance in their lives when their families and career are simpatico. “I’m not really a baby person,” she grins. “I love my kids, but I don’t have that instinct to pick up someone else’s baby that isn’t mine, for instance. Sometimes I feel like all I do all day long is put kids to bed, or feed them, and I go bonkers.”

Gordon, born and raised in White Rock, is the senior meteorologist on Global BC’s News Hour, Early News and Noon News Hour. She is looking forward to returning to work next summer, and has most certainly risen from the ashes of media frenzy around her on-camera growing belly during both pregnancies. A few viewers took a negative view and complained in hateful letters to Global and directly to Gordon that she should be taken off the air, looked like the “Hindenburg” and more.

Global fully supported Gordon and her choice to work right up to her due date, and the wardrobe she wore on-air. Haters were outnumbered, thankfully. “I would get floods of email through our website, about 300 emails a day from all over the world, with people supporting me who had seen and heard about this awful stuff,” Gordon says. “Teachers in China were using this as an example to teach their kids about women’s rights and equality. It was amazing.”

“Now the larger conversation about the unrealistic expectations on the appearance of on-air meteorologists and the unfair negativity toward pregnant women on TV often references me, which is kind of nice.” Happy to be the poster child for a positive shift, she says, “Times are changing. Women don’t need to be picture perfect, pregnant or not, and life isn’t like that.”

“Most of what you see on TV, in magazines and on social media is merely a snapshot of people’s lives, a moment which is often staged and styled,” she continues. “Real life happens in between those moments … runny noses … spit up.”

Gordon handled the situation with grace, put it behind her, and now months later, we find her at home gearing up for the holiday season with her husband Paul Klawer. Like most career couples with young children, they are looking forward to some cozy, family time over the holiday season, and establishing their own traditions.

Any activities or traditions in particular they find important? “Decorating with the whole family, we do the tree together, not just me being the mom,” she says. “Jordan is so excited now that he is four, and is counting down the days. Having kids really has revitalized the season and reminded me of what Christmas is all about,” she adds. “It’s brought the magic of it back.”

Christmas Eve means the usual traditions of hanging stockings for the kids, cookies for Santa, and putting out salt for the reindeer to lick, which she says “is always fun for Paul or I to have to stick a tongue in the plate of salt. We settle it with [a game of] Rock, Paper, Scissors for that job.”

Every Christmas Day is spent alternating with their respective families. With Gordon’s folks, they get out for a walk after gifts are opened, or ski if they spend it in Whistler, and “we always play a game after dinner, like Pictionary. With all the rush, it’s nice to just relax then.”

Since it’s Braden’s first Christmas this year, he’s a bit young to fully understand what’s going on, but Jordan is busy doing crafts. “We just got a book from the library on how to make angels. Not snowmen, or reindeer, he wants angels,” says his mom.

Gordon’s sister is a sustainable community planner and has been spearheading new traditions in the family for several years now, including encouraging the use of recyclable Christmas wrapping, nixing gift cards, and only exchanging handmade gifts or consumables with the adults in the family. “One year we chose not to buy anything made halfway across the world as gifts, and no disposable stuff,” she says.

With Braden in sleep training, and Jordan at daycare, revved up like any little guy with the prospect of Santa’s visit, what does Gordon do for herself with limited me-time as she tries to stay sane over the holidays? “Drink wine and watch Netflix or Shaw on Demand,” she laughs. When it comes to one of B.C.’s favourite meteorologists, it’s clear Kristi Gordon’s honesty is very much part of her charm.