Watching Wimbledon this week, I witnessed the most remarkable sight. A kid was playing a senior player in the tournament. His opponent slipped on the grass, twisting his ankle. The boy immediately ran to his side and knelt beside him until a medico arrived. That kid...

I do not like to fail. Whatever goals I’ve set I’ve always achieved. I’ve done so by believing there was always a way. You just have to find the right path. Some writers and authors have a knack for using language that can really move people. Some writers and authors...

We chose the Delta West Academy for our kids because the school taught from pre-school to Grade 12, and its pupils totalled a mere hundred. My boys, going through the system twenty-one months apart, had an enviable class size of 8. Within this close-knit community,...

The scene—a warm, sunny summer Sunday afternoon, amid a chorus of homespun English accents—could have been anywhere on the coast of Cornwall or Devon. But it wasn’t. This narrow strip of ochre sand peered out at me from the far corner of the English Forces Base,...

It was a mistake. Coming home one evening, I slumped into an armchair beside Mum. “Can’t go on this way. I’m so depressed. No-one at work likes me. I’m failing all my exams. How can I become an accountant when I can’t even add up? Can I go see a psychiatrist?” At that...

Since his retirement several years ago, my client John and I meet every time he’s back in town. His greeting is always the same. “Oh! I have a whole bunch of bills to pay.” “John, they’re all for the trips you make. You have no mortgage. You spend $20,000 a month...

Lou’s best friend once told him “You’re lucky your father was born before you.” Over decades, his family had accumulated a number of rinky-dink 12-suiters across Calgary. In his mid-twenties, with no ambition, Lou became a caretaker of one of those buildings. Lou...

Lulu was Flo’s mum. Flo was my English foster mum. Attending North Town Primary School—a fifteen-minute walk from home—I dropped in every Friday afternoon, to visit Lulu from the age of five to eleven. “Tell Flo I’m at the end o’ me tether.” She would say this every...

Perhaps it wasn’t my home, but Hong Kong sure felt like it. From the age of twelve, I was showered with free airline tickets by my father, an employee of East African Airways. Although rich in tickets, we were poor financially. This meant sleeping on airport floors...

Wes was the most charming client in my menagerie of accounting clients—a great charm causing me the utmost stress and anxiety. Accounting records were not handed over until almost the very last day of the taxman’s deadline. When shown the completed statements and...