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,...

Recently, I was almost kicked out of Singapore within ten minutes of arriving. It had been a long and continual sleep-interrupted journey—a sixteen-hour flight from Vancouver. Once again, I was woken up by the steward. “We are landing in twenty minutes. Please...

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,...

Last week, as I spring-cleaned, I came across an essay written by my son Chris. It began: “My dad was the only dad who drove my brother and me to school every day from grades 1 to 12. He took so much pride in this because it was usually just mothers who drove their...

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...

On a glorious summer’s day, my quintessential London isn’t the tawdry brazenness of Piccadilly, nor the arch-celebration-of-invincibility, Trafalgar Square. It lies in the environs of Green Park tube station. Across the broad boulevard of Piccadilly, overburdened with...

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...