My most memorable ending of a book is from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje: While recuperating in Italy, on the aftermath of World War II, a couple meet and fall in love. The man returns to his native India, the woman to Canada. At the end of the book, Kirpal...

On a sunny afternoon in early October 1973, my BOAC plane landed gently on to the tarmac of Beirut Airport. I had just turned 18, finished grammar school and was about to spend the next three months travelling through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Having only pocket...

The Galeries Lafayette in Paris is one of the most beautiful women’s fashion houses in the city. A seven-storey building, it’s a layer cake of open galleries, one placed upon the other, topped with a stained-glass dome. It was completed in 1912 in the Art Nouveau...

It was past 11 p.m. and I was attempting to meet an accounting deadline for the following morning. Christopher, my student son came storming into the room, “Pops, get to bed. You never stay up past 10 p.m. At your age you’ll have a heart attack.” For once, I listened...

My parents named me Emil Kassamali Salehmohamed Remtulla. In our small Muslim town, my middle names were that of my father and that of my grandfather, so everyone within my community knew which family I came from. Emil was given to me to remember a German who had...

Of talking to strangers. While attending night school to obtain my Canadian CPA, a fellow East Indian approached me, “Can you do my tax return?” All I knew of the man was that he was a janitor whom I’d bump into in the washroom. Instead of ignoring him, I impetuously...

Six years ago, I began to write. When strangers asked what I did for a living, I replied “I’m a world-famous author.” None of my books had been sold. I BELIEVED I was a world-famous writer. It would take time for others to catch on. One day, my mother came home early...

It’s Sunday, but there is no rest for the lonely accountant. I have a deadline to prepare a financial statement for Tuesday morning and twenty personal tax returns to complete by June 15 for the self-employed. I wake up at 5 am with all enthusiasm to accomplish and be...

Friends, Accountants and countrymen, lend me your ears. For I have come at this season to bury tax returns not to praise them! The good that men do is oft interred in my books. Go forth and cast your eyes upon my revamped website at EmilRem.ca. Forget Ukraine,...

One of my favourite Christmas movies, Love Actually portrays vignettes of all aspects of love. Babysitting my boys one evening, sending one to bed and telling the other to keep quiet or else, my mind slipped into the past when a poor working class English family took...