:: Martin Collis

You don't find the Food Channel on TV by accident. It's up there in the high numbers beyond CNN and 'Law and Order', it's somewhere in a cluster with 24-hour golf (which of Dante's Circles is that?), antique shows and home renovations. Yet it's the Food Channel that has provided me with my best TV watching this Millennium, four one-hour shows with a bland title ('Jamie's School Dinners'), about one of the blandest and saddest meals in the world: school dinners, (school lunches in North American parlance). But this seemingly bland leading the bland TV captured the reality that eludes 'reality' shows and has begun to do for children's nutrition what Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" did for migrant workers in California.

Britain's young celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver loves food with a passion that most Brits reserve for football (soccer) and many North Americans never know at all. He grew up helping to cook in his parents' pub, The Cricketers and at 16 went off to Catering College. Five years later he was working at the prestigious River Café in London, where he was featured in a TV show, 'Christmas at the River Café'. He was a natural on TV and within a year had created his own show on BBC called 'The Naked Chef', with 'naked' referring to the natural simplicity of Jamie's ingredients and not his unclothed body. In his early 20's he was on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire; he was a star on TV, columnist for top newspapers and magazines, his books sold in the millions and he had a multi-million pound deal with Sainsbury's supermarket to promote their food. All he had to do was open up some high-end restaurants and count the money.

To use Jamie Oliver terminology it would have been 'easy peasy' to make a ton of money fronting a posh restaurant. Instead, he proposed to train out-of-work, underprivileged youth to be chefs who would run a restaurant which he created called 'Fifteen' (Matchbook cover is from Fifteen), the number of students who survived his training. He suggested filming the training for a TV show called 'Oliver's Army' (from the Elvis Costello song of that name) but was turned down by the BBC. However, Channel 4 liked the concept, changed the name of the show to the rather insipid 'Jamie's Kitchen' and broadcast the series to almost universal acclaim. (A DVD copy of this show and the companion cookbook, both titled 'Jamie's Kitchen', can be ordered from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca) The 'Fifteen' restaurant became a reality and despite the odd negative review from a 'foodie' concerned that great food was losing its exclusivity, Fifteen is booked about a year ahead and even had to turn away Bill Clinton one night.

Surely the man had done enough, but instead he plunged deeper and deeper into the fundamentals of food and national nutrition. Jamie looked at what English children were being fed for their school dinners. (In North America this would be called a 'hot lunch program'). Jamie looked and he was gobsmacked; the menus featured items such as burgers, chips, pizza, fish sticks, potato smilies, turkey twizzlers and some of the world's nastier chicken nuggets. The closer he looked the worse it got, the cost of each meal could not exceed 37p (about 75 cents Canadian or 65 cents US), the dinner ladies were low paid and under trained, all the food seemed to be reconstituted, fried and reheated and, perhaps worst of all, the kids liked it. The problem that faced Jamie Oliver was nothing more or less than re-educating the taste buds of a nation. The dominant multi-national companies know that taste buds respond to food that is salty, fat and sweet so that's what they sell. Children brought up on this pap and crap lose their ability to enjoy real food, they can't handle the flavors and textures of many vegetables, fruits and spices and refuse to eat the nutrients that may save their lives.

We all know how experts, professionals, politicians and academics respond to a situation such as this:

1. THEY IGNORE IT!!!
   There's no glamour in school dinners and a host of bureaucratic problems. If people hadn't ignored kids' nutrition it would never have sunk to where it is today.
2. They study it by getting millions of dollars (pounds) for research to collect data.
3. They form task forces, committees and focus groups to examine the problem.
4. They sell their professional souls by taking money from the commercial giants, who supply the food, to say that it actually exceeds minimal nutritional requirements.
5. They write articles in magazines and academic journals.
6. They re-write Federal food guides. They redesign the Food Pyramid (US) or Rainbow (Canada), which previously had been heavily influenced by lobbyists for organizations such as Dairy Producers, Meat Marketing Boards etc.

7. They might even create expensive web sites.
   

In the words of Shakespeare,

They will strut and fret their hour on the stage and then be heard no more.
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Jamie Oliver did none of the above. He felt children deserved better and with all his enthusiasm, energy, naivete and street smarts set out to do it himself. He started with one school in Greenwich; it was a comprehensive school with about 1500 students with a good mix of ethnicity and socio-economic groups. I will just give you a few examples of the problems he faced.

• The dinner ladies were used to opening cardboard boxes, putting the food on trays and pushing the trays into ovens. Jamie wanted them to chop, blend and actually use some basic culinary skills, which virtually none of them possessed. It took all Jamie's charm and huge personal effort to help the dinner ladies prepare a nutritional alternative to bland, boxed food.
• 800 children participated in the dinner program and on the 1st day Jamie's food was available they had a choice: Great Food or Garbage ONE CHILD SELECTED THE GREAT FOOD
• Jamie went into the classrooms and taught and tried to create a different food culture in the school, but still only a few kids would select the simple, healthy food prepared by England's most famous chef.
• Jamie then eliminated the pre-prepared, reheated food and served only his food and faced a revolt. Kids threw it away by the bin full. Parents called in asking when they were going back to "real food". Mothers passed chocolate bars and chips through the school railings. 25% dropped the program and most of the others would only eat sandwiches, which Jamie felt compelled to prepare along with his cooked food.

Jamie and Nora in the kitchen

The dinner ladies hated it, the kids hated it, the parents were upset and the school administration faced a barrage of complaints. But Jamie Oliver didn't succeed by accident, and he systematically dealt with every problem. He persuaded the dinner ladies to work longer hours and promised to try to get the district to pay for them. He created a whole school curriculum so that food was a part of every subject. He got kids to help him make food, which would be acceptable to the damaged palates of Greenwich children. (One taster turned down £50 to taste a chicken and veggie wrap. "It'll make me throw up.") Jamie went out into the street with free curries and chow meins to try to win over the children crowded around the chip shops and corner stores. Gradually there was acceptance and children reluctantly learned to eat wholesome food and then started to like it.

The results surprised the school personnel. Teachers reported that the children who ate Jamie's dinners tended to concentrate better in the afternoon compared to kids who had pop, chocolate and chips. The school nurse said the "puffer" that she used for children with allergy problems was getting less and less necessary. But one school does not a program make and the next task that faced Jamie Oliver was how to take the program district wide.

All the principals in the Greenwich district were invited to Fifteen, where Jamie fed them his version of school dinners. He took 60 dinner ladies to the army cooking school at half term to teach them to cook. It was shocking to see that when he prepared a great meal for them at the end of a long day, they were just like the kids and left most of the vegetables and wouldn't try anything unfamiliar. There were many, many weak links in the children's food chain, but one of them was certainly that the school personnel in charge of feeding them, the dinner ladies, knew little about food.

One has to be careful of just blaming the schools; the origins of the problem are with the parents and the culture itself. A culture that bombards the unformed minds of little children with TV ads for bad food. A culture that allows the multi-nationals a beachhead in the schools with machines dispensing solid and liquid junk. A culture in which parents cheat their children of nutrition by serving meals from packages and cans or by stopping off for fast food, or ordering pizza. Growing children need good food and exercise, both of which take time and it's time which parents seem unable to find. A pediatrician on the show told Jamie that he sees children who consume so much fat that their bowels shut down and they vomit up half formed feces. Jamie interviewed a nutritionist who said she holds weekly constipation clinics as many of the children do not have regular bowel movements and some had not gone for 6 weeks. Her concern was for the probability of these children developing colon cancer later in life. I'm writing this on June 29th and in this morning's paper I read of a school teacher who was reprimanded for refusing to send home bonus fast food coupons with his students' report cards.

As a direct result of Jamie's efforts the British Government came up with £280 million over 3 years to improve school nutrition. Kitchens will be upgraded, the dinner ladies will get an extra hour of preparation time and the kids will not have to be fed on 37p a head. The British Medical Journal recently wrote, "Jamie Oliver has done more for the public health of our children than an army of health promotion officers or a hundred million pound advertising campaign."

However, you don't beat the junk-food merchants easily, some British school districts are locked into 25-year contracts and their lawyers are sharpening their pencils because they know if they had to provide nutritious, fresh food their profit margins would disappear. I wrote in a previous 'Well' article that parents panicked when the Pied Piper came for their children. The Pied Piper of fast food has arrived, but most parents, instead of protecting their children, are dancing along to his tune. Jamie Oliver is playing a different tune and it's one that could do more for the health of children than anything since child labor was made illegal.

Here is an extract from a typical letter from a UK food website.

« They did have one great chef who insisted on going in at 7am to supply a good breakfast instead of just a danish every day. He also supplied healthy stuff for the 11am break, so lots of them had that instead of going to the vending machine. Guess what? He and/or the company he worked for lost the tender because of the cost. All I can say is I hope that someone somewhere is listening to Jamie. »

For more information about Jamie's School Dinners check out his website. Jamie's books are available through Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.

Here are a couple of the recipes Jamie used in the schools.

Lemon-roasted Chicken

Serves 5

Ingredients

1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 clove of garlic, peeled
1 small pinch mixed dried herbs
35ml olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 whole chicken legs

Method

Zest the lemon by gently grating the yellow skin with a fine grater; peel the garlic

For the marinade

1. Prepare the marinade by blitzing the lemon zest and juice, garlic, mixed herbs and olive oil in a blender, making sure it is all mixed well.
2. Once blended, add a small pinch of salt and a grind of pepper, taste a tiny bit to check the seasoning.
3. Pour the marinade over the chicken legs, rubbing it into every nook and cranny. Cover and leave in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or preferably overnight so that the flavours can develop. You can cook the chicken straight away but the flavours will be nicer if you can leave it to marinate.

A few hours later...

4. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F
5. Transfer your chicken legs to a shallow baking tray, spoon the marinade over the chicken legs and cook in the preheated oven for between 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until golden, crisp and tender.

Super Vegetable Noodle Chow Mein

Serves 5

Ingredients

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger.
1 clove garlic.
one-half - one red chilli, deseeded.
150g noodles.
Drop of sesame seed oil.
1 onion, sliced.
2 carrots, shedded.
100g beansprouts.
50g mangetout peas (sugar peas).
1 red pepper, sliced.
1 yellow pepper, sliced.
100g mushrooms, sliced.
1 spring onion.
Soya sauce.

Method

Finely slice the chilli then peel and finely chop the ginger and garlic. Add a little water to this mixture to make a paste. Cook the noodles in boiling, salted water for 4 minutes, and refresh in cold water. Heat the sesame seed oil in a frying pan or wok and cook the chilli paste and onion for 10 minutes. Add the rest of the veggies until they're cooked, but still crunchy.

Add the noodles for a couple of seconds and combine. Drizzle with a little soy sauce.

And I'll leave the last word to Jamie.

« Being a good cook isn't about being born to it, it's about discovery and growth. I don't believe there is such a thing as a person who doesn't like cooking, they just don't know it yet. »

Alice Waters—Food Fighter in the USA

Alice Waters is twice the age of Jamie Oliver but that doesn’t stop her culinary crusade to get American children eating wholesome, nutritious food. Like Jamie, she’s a world-famous chef and I can attest to the great food at her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. The similarities between her approach to school based nutrition and Jamie’s are remarkable. After much political wrangling and persuasion she created a one acre garden at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley and involved the children in the preparation and eating of food they had actually grown in a program called the Edible Schoolyard. All 16 public schools in Berkeley now provide a Waters designed nutritious lunch for over 9000 students.

Alice Waters and students at work in an ‘edible schoolyard’

It was hard to take the program beyond the confines of Berkeley, which has often been on the cutting edge of new ideas. Ms. Waters radical strategy was to go to Washington and plant a vegetable garden in the National Mall as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

R. W. Apple of the New York Times writes:

Unlikely as it may seem, there she was on a late June morning, the queen of California cuisine, bouncing out of a car, opening a tiny parasol to shield herself from Washington's pitiless summer sun, pausing to pick up a few stray shreds of litter, then showing a friend around a dozen raised beds of thriving corn, beans and eggplants, okra and mizuna, onions and tomatoes. Sunflowers grew along one side, high-bush blueberries on another. A shiny copper wood-burning oven sparkled in the morning light, and a large wooden gazebolike shelter stood in the center.

Ms. Waters was there to promote a cause as surely as civil-rights crusaders and anti-abortion demonstrators have done in the past. Her cause is inculcating improved lifelong eating habits among schoolchildren, thereby fighting rampant obesity and supporting sustainable local agriculture in the process. She terms it "edible education," and she has declared all-out war on the burger-and-soda school lunch.

IDEALISTIC as she is, Ms. Waters, 61, is no political naïf. During and after her years at the University of California she was active in the radical Free Speech Movement there, and she has maintained a lively interest in public affairs ever since. As long ago as December 1995, she began looking for a way to dramatize her concerns in Washington, writing to President Bill Clinton to ask him to establish an organic vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House.

"I am convinced that food can again be, as it once was, the everyday vehicle for learning mutual responsibility," she wrote. "When food preparation and service was both the solemn shared duty and the reward of family living, community values were instilled at the dinner table. If you were to talk about food with the same fervor with which you now talk about AmeriCorps, it could accelerate and strengthen our movement toward a healthier diet and saner society."

Appeals from afar having failed, Ms. Waters decided to go to Washington herself, like Frank Capra's Mr. Smith. In five extremely busy days here she not only watched children exploring her garden, carrying compost and pulling weeds under the guidance of teachers, but also plunged headlong into the political life of the capital. Movers and shakers came to hear her pitch and to share light lunches at picnic tables set up inside a temporary honeysuckle-clad enclosure just beyond the vegetable beds: senior officials of the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services; senators like Barbara Boxer, Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin and Hillary Rodham Clinton; and representatives like Lynn Woolsey and Nancy Pelosi. All the visitors from Capitol Hill were Democrats; Laura Bush was asked, among other Republicans, but sent her regrets.

Ms. Waters opened the festival with Brillat-Savarin's maxim to the effect that the destiny of nations is dependent upon how they nourish themselves. Then she drove home her argument:

"The future of American agriculture, our environmental preservation, our health and our family traditions—all these things depend on the choices we make about what we eat every day. That's what I mean when I talk about edible education: learning where our food comes from and how to eat it."

MS. WATERS said she got "an overwhelmingly positive response" from almost everyone who had toured the garden, including the politicians, bureaucrats and others like Kevin Klose, president of National Public Radio, and Robert Egger, founder of D.C. Central Kitchen, which feeds homeless people. But enormous problems remain if her vision for Berkeley, let alone the United States as a whole, is ever to be realized.

The school lunch project will work, she said, only if all students in a school take part, and they will all take part only if the food is delicious as well as healthy. Ms. Waters speaks of turning students into fledgling "eco-gastronomes" whose adventures in the garden and in cafeterias where the tables are set with real dishes and cutlery will be paralleled by their classroom studies of geography, history and the sciences. Where does the food come from? How is it grown? What happens when you cook it?

Clearly, the Chez Panisse Foundation and the three other organizations involved in the initiative lack the capacity to raise the tens of millions of dollars that will be needed, but Ms. Waters thinks she can involve national foundations as well as state and federal governments.

"We have a health crisis, a public-school crisis and an environmental crisis, and we need to address them all, the way President Kennedy addressed our physical-fitness crisis 45 years ago," she said with all the pedagogic passion of the Montessori teacher she once was. "We need to create a new curriculum, and we need to teach it with interactive, hands-on techniques, and not just to kids sitting behind desks.

"We're going to show a whole generation of kids how to cook and how to eat, and our country will be the beneficiary."

Some Useful References and Contacts

• The Edible Schoolyard
  Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School
  1781 Rose Street
  Berkeley, CA 94703
  Ph: 510.558.1335
  Fax: 510.558.1334
  info@edibleschoolyard.org
  www.edibleschoolyard.org
  
  
• Olympia, Washington, School District
  Contact: Paul Flock, Child Nutrition Supervisor
  Ph: 360.596.7007
  pflock@osd.wendet.edu
  Or
  Vanessa Ruddy (parent who spearheaded Olympia organic program)
  vanessaruddy27@hotmail.com
  
  
• Nutritional Resource Foundation
  Contact: Melissa Luedtke
  PO Box 730
  Manitowoc, WI 54221-0730
  Ph: 920.758.2500.x 131
  nrf@naturalovens.com
  
  
• California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA)
  Ph: 415.777.4422
  
  
• Citizens for Healthy Options in Children’s Education (CHOICE)
  Ph: 1.877.6CHOICE (624.6423)
  
  
• www.nojunkfood.org
  
  
• Food Studies Institute

I've been asked a number of times if pedometers work when you're riding a bike. The answer is 'no'. However, because cycling is such an excellent aerobic activity Speakwell decided to create P•E•Dal Canada to record and reward your cycling activity. Based on our popular Circle Canada P•E•D, this 'Pedalling Enhancement Device' will allow you to record the kilometres you ride on your bike on each day and then show the calories you've burned, and how far around Canada you would have travelled. You don't have to be Canadian to tour Canada and we welcome the world to P•E•Dal Canada.

You'll find a map of Canada that shows your progress with a little red line that snakes from city to city as you increase your kilometres logged. On arriving in any of the major stops along the way, you can click to have a popup window take you on a graphically illustrated visitor's tour of art galleries, restaurants, famous residents, biking and hiking trails and into the history of some of Canada's tumultuous past.

Regular cycling produces all the benefits we have come to associate with aerobic exercise. It decreases the likelihood of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Cycling is an excellent way to burn calories and an asset to any weight management program. For example, a 15 minute bike ride to and from work 5 times a week burns off the equivalent of 18lbs of fat in a year. Pedaling improves your mood and just makes you feel better. Moderate aerobic exercise such as cycling has been found to reduce levels of depression and stress, improve mood and raise self-esteem.

A Department of Transport study found that it didn't take a lot of cycling to attain significant gains in aerobic fitness.

Use P•E•Dal Canada to track your kilometres and calories and to reward yourself for every mile you ride.

If you ride a stationary bike that's fine but don't cheat yourself by setting the resistance too low. Try to simulate the feeling of a regular bike ride outside.

Many factors can influence how many calories you might burn per kilometre but a good rule of thumb is 25 calories per kilometre (40 calories per mile). If you live in the USA and are used to recording in miles, just multiply by 1.6 to convert them to kilometres. In our calculations we are using 25 calories per kilometre.

You can PEDal Canada alone, or with a group. I anticipate that a cycling club that works as a team will be round the 18.000km pretty quickly. It wouldn't take Lance Armstrong and his boys very long.

So, add to your health benefits and enjoyment by keeping track of your kilometres ridden and entering them in P•E•Dal Canada. If you'd like to leave 'Well' and check it out now, this button, which appears on the www.speakwell.com home page, will take you there:

And you will see:



Scroll down to see how the P•E•D functions by recording your steps
and keeping a cumulative record.

Scroll down further and you'll see 3 buttons, and a cyclist.
Click the cyclist and you will arrive here:

It's always a challenge to create a program such as P•E•Dal Canada, which is user-friendly and challenging. We welcome any feedback about your individual or group experiences using P•E•Dal Canada.

«The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.»
:: John Howard

«The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.»
:: Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

«When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.»
:: H.G. Wells

«The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.»
:: Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist

«Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world.»
:: Grant Petersen

& Words of Wisdom from Steve Jobs

  : : Martin Collis

A walker has walked her last stride,
She ate a bad Apple and died.
The Apple fermented
Inside the lamented
And made cider, inside her, inside.

Circle Canada is a success story. Thousands of people and hundreds of teams are tracing their own red line through every province and territory of the country. We created something good; there are no user fees and no prizes except the health of the participants.

Our reward at Speakwell was a letter from Apple's lawyers. Our step-recording device, 'iPed', was too similar in name to Apple's nifty music player iPod: change the name or face the legal consequences. Apple has deeper pockets than we do, so iPed has become P•E•D (Pedometer Enhancement Device), which is acceptable to the legal eagles at Apple.

In some ways the Apple problem is not a big deal, it's an inconvenience, instructions have to be changed and our web producer, Ron Nye, has had to magically transform iPed to P•E•D throughout the website.

C'est la vie, but it's symptomatic of the heavy-handed, money focused modus operandi of a global company. There was no consultation, no exploration of possible mutual interests, just 'Do it our way, or be sued'. It might have been beneficial to Apple and Speakwell to collaborate and promote the use of iPods among our thousands of joggers, walkers and now, cyclists using P•E•Dal Canada. Slogans such as 'Listen to your iPod while iPed counts your steps' come to mind, but that's not the way the world of global companies seems to work.

It's too bad because I've always liked Apple products. I remember the company starting up in Cupertino when I was a student at Stanford. They were very cool and cutting edge. Steve Jobs was the genius behind Apple, but at one time the company got so corporate that they lost sight of who they were and fired Jobs. Apple stock plummeted and finally, with bankruptcy threatening, the company persuaded Jobs to return. I thought you might enjoy his recent commencement address to the graduating class at Stanford. It's a good one.

hank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition.

After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty.

We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out.

When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months.

I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.

Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much."

:: Martin Collis

25 years ago Terry Fox’s ‘Marathon of Hope’ came to an end; at the same time Dick Hoyt and his son ran their first Boston Marathon; 20 years ago Rick Hansen began his wheelchair journey round the world and nearly 10 years ago Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer. What a remarkable species we humans are.

The daylight was heavy with thunder
And the smell of the rain on the wind
Ain’t it just like a human
Here comes the rainbow again.
by Kris Kristofferson
(To read the full lyrics read our Poetry section)

The 1st of September will mark the 25th anniversary of the end of Terry Fox’s attempted cross Canada run. Terry died, but in the words of Robert Earl Keen, “The road goes on forever and the party never ends.”

The story really begins with a car crash in the suburbs of Vancouver when the 18-year-old Terry Fox slammed his Ford Cortina into a half-ton truck. Terry limped away and got on with life, but the bruising around his knee would not go away and within a few months he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, a form of cancer often brought on by trauma, which works its way into bone, muscle and connective tissue. Four months after the accident Terry’s right leg was amputated 6” above the knee. Within a few months he was playing wheelchair basketball with Rick Hansen on a team named the Cablecars that won the Canadian championship the following year. This was clear evidence that Terry and Rick were athletes, competitors and winners.

Hard work can build character, but adversity reveals it. Out of a smashed car and a hospital operating room emerged a one-legged young man who almost defined the word ‘hero’, and changed the way many people thought about cancer and amputees. Wheelchair basketball was great but Terry had a bigger vision, he was going to run/hop across Canada. What I love about the concept and beginnings of the run in Newfoundland was that it was so low-tech and non-corporate. There were no cell phones and emails, no big corporate sponsors, just Terry and a few friends and family using pay phones to try and drum up a bit of publicity in upcoming towns. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Somewhere along the way word began to leak out about the one-legged man and his Marathon of Hope. The crowds started to build and a cynical nation believed Terry when he said, “I’m not doing this to become rich or famous. One of the problems with our world is that people are getting greedy and selfish.” The lonely runner with one camper van now started getting police escorts and other runners for company and the crowds got progressively bigger at the end of each day.

Quoting from Doug Coupland’s book “Terry”, “Nobody—nobody in recorded history—had ever run this many consecutive marathons, so there were no examples to learn from. Terry had shin splints, he lost many of his toenails, his knee was inflamed, his stump was endlessly bruised and chaffed and developed many cysts He lost weight, got dizzy spells and saw double—but he kept all this to himself.”

The Marathon of Hope did not end with a huge celebration on the West Coast but with coughing and chest pains in Thunder Bay. The cancer was back and this time it took more than a leg, it claimed all of Terry Fox except his spirit.

Terry Fox memorial Thunder Bay

I’m reminded of the song,

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

The soul and spirit of Terry Fox won’t die and 25 years later hundreds of thousands of people take part in Terry Fox runs. A mountain bears his name, there are many Terry Fox schools and now our one-dollar coin shows his image, the first Canadian coin ever struck that shows a person other than a king or queen.

Terry dreamed of raising a dollar for every Canadian. He has exceeded that goal many, many times over and cancer research has been the beneficiary.

Doug Coupland’s biography of Terry Fox, titled “Terry” is available through Amazon.com and Amazon.ca The author is donating all of his royalties from the book directly to the Terry Fox Foundation. The publisher, Douglas and McIntyre, is making a contribution to the foundation by paying royalties at double the normal rate for every copy of the book that is sold.

by Rick Reilly (Written for Sports Illustrated)
(Thanks to Bill Dickerson for sending this terrific story to us).

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to on vacations.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars—all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?


And what has Rick done for his father? Not much—except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain." "Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that." Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. “No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?” How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992—only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. “No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.” So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. “The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

For more information about Dick and Rick Hoyt go to www.teamhoyt.com

Rick’s introduction to paralysis was instant and catastrophic and like Terry Fox it began with a road accident. The athletic 15-year old was riding in the back of a pickup truck, which went off the road and flipped, breaking the back, but not the spirit, of Rick Hansen. Today Rick tells people about the progress in spinal cord injury treatment, “When I was injured in 1973, only about 30% of people with spinal cord injuries had a chance of any level of recovery at all. Today it’s 70%.”

Rick and I spoke to the teachers of Williams Lake School District where Rick had been a student and he personally thanked the teachers who helped convince him that life was not over and that a small town boy from British Columbia could still make a big impact even without his legs. His phys. ed. teacher became a powerful advocate in helping him to be the first paraplegic student ever accepted into Physical Education at the University of British Columbia. He more than justified his selection by winning 3 world championships in wheelchair marathons and 5 Canadian championships at wheelchair basketball. Terry Fox was a basketball teammate and Terry’s ‘Marathon of Hope’ became an inspiration and catalyst for Rick’s imagination. He was pretty sure he could make the cross-Canada trip in his wheelchair, but what if he went right round the globe?

I don’t have enough adjectives or space to describe the pain, problems and injuries that Rick encountered. His ‘Man in Motion’ odyssey was not ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ but around the world in 2 years, 2 months and 2 days.

« Rick at the Great Wall

When you launch yourself into the unknown, by definition you have no idea what the outcomes will be. The chances are good that there’ll be problems, but the chances are better that those will be positive life-changing experiences. So it was for Rick. His physiotherapist on the journey, Amanda, became his wife with whom he has had three children. He has become a sought after speaker and a passionate advocate for people with disabilities. The ‘Man in Motion’ tour raised enormous amounts of money for spinal cord research and the ‘Rick Hansen Wheels in Motion’ drive continues to do so.

Two teenage boys from small town in BC, both involved in road accidents. Terry Fox failed to complete his run across Canada, Rick failed in his attempt to walk again, but those ‘failures’ have become glorious success stories. Because of them and others like them we now look differently at people with so-called ‘disabilities’. Advances in research and medicine are making some cancers ever more treatable and it’s my belief that we’ll see spinal cord repair and regeneration in my lifetime. Rick Hansen might not walk again, but because of him people in his children’s generation will. One more thing, a small item in the newspaper recently said that the name of Rick Hansen is being talked about as the next Governor General of Canada. That would be another first. We’d better make sure Rideau Hall is totally wheelchair accessible.

What can you say about Lance that hasn’t been written? As I write this he’s half way through the 2005 Tour de France and he wears the yellow jersey, the Golden Fleece to which every rider aspires.

The LiveStrong yellow bracelets that Lance uses to raise money for cancer research have now sold around 50 million. Go Lance! Allez, allez, allez!!

:: Martin Collis

Martin Luther King said, “I have been to the mountaintop”
and so have our Omron HJ105 pedometers.

They went up Everest and though they didn’t make the summit they were very, very high. One of the most successful advertising slogans for Timex watches was, “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking”, so it is with Omron pedometers. Speakwell speaker Rob Dyke took some Omron HJ105s to Everest where they logged millions of steps in the cold, thin air.

Omron HJ-105
	Freestyle Ergo Touch #591
My Health XL15
	New Lifestyles SW700
SAHO Step It Up EzV

A complete list will appear in a future edition of “Well” and in my upcoming book, “You’re a Walking Miracle”.

N.A.S.H. (Not A Spoiled Hero) To say that Steve Nash was a long shot to be named the MVP (Most Valuable Player) in the National Basketball Association is an understatement.

Twelve years ago when he was a scrawny kid playing for a small high school in Victoria the odds of him being MVP were conservatively a billion to one.

No Canadian under 6’6” had ever even played in the NBA and only one small Catholic University felt he was good enough to merit a scholarship offer. Against all odds, he took that small University, Santa Clara, deep into the NCAA Tournament, where his talent and work ethic became obvious.

He was drafted into the NBA by Phoenix, who traded him to Dallas, in what one major Dallas newspaper headlined as “The Worst Trade in the History of the Franchise”.

With Nash at point guard Dallas became the top scoring team in the NBA, but when it came time to re-sign him at age 30 Dallas felt they could get him cheap by NBA standards and offered him about 1/2 of what Seattle have just paid their 30 year old point guard Ray Allen. There were also strong rumors that a newly signed Steve might be packaged in a trade for Shaquille O’Neal. (Dallas did not offer him a ‘no trade’ clause.)

Phoenix offered Steve money more in keeping with his All-Star status and convinced him that they really wanted him to be the floor general for their team. Steve’s impact on Phoenix was immediate and sustained and they went from a team who didn’t make the play-offs to the team with the best record in the NBA. One of the teams that Phoenix eliminated in the play-offs was Dallas and “The Worst Trade in the History of the Franchise” took on a different meaning.

Statistically the chance of Steve Nash being named MVP was remote, but to measure Steve Nash by statistics alone is like judging a top chef’s meal by its caloric content.

In the past 40 years:

• No point guard has won the trophy
• No one under 6’6” has won the trophy
• No one who can’t dunk has been MVP
• Only 2 other white players have made it (Dave Cowans and Larry Bird)
• Every MVP has been their team’s leading point scorer

The award typically goes to a big, dominant, high scoring player, more often than not, a center. But for once the writers who vote for the MVP recognized the power of a catalyst who could transform a team with 50 losses to a team with 50 wins and Steve Nash was named MVP with the 7’1” 340lb Shaq in 2nd place.

I’ve written about Steve before in “Well” (Spring 2002) and am still impressed by how he continues to beat the odds and how he continues to make the world around him a little better. He wore a ‘Shoot for Peace’ t-shirt at the All-Star game, he quietly funds a variety of kids’ programs and he never forgets his friends, including former Speakwell employee Simon Ibell, who has beaten a few odds himself by being accepted into the graduate Kinesiology program at UBC. It’s refreshing to see an athlete who has his sport and money in perspective, who is unselfish both on and off the basketball court and is humble in the face of recognition and adulation. I recently met someone who played on the Santa Clara soccer team at the time that Steve was a student. He said that there was no question that Steve was a hero and the proverbial Big Man on Campus, but what impressed him was that before almost every home game the soccer team played Steve would stop by the dressing room, give a few high fives and wish them well, something no other athlete on campus even thought of doing. A couple of anecdotes about his parents might give a clue as to where Steve got his humility and personality.

A number of years back I saw John, Steve’s dad, sweeping up popcorn, cigarette butts and hamburger wrappers below the University of Victoria stadium at a track meet. John explained that the parents of his daughter Joanne’s soccer team were raising money for a road trip by volunteering to do garbage patrol. Joanne is now involved in working with the Steve Nash Foundation. He had one son playing for Canada at basketball, the other, Martin, representing Canada at soccer and it would have been easy for John to write a cheque or say he was too busy, but in the Nash family everybody counts, and everyone does their bit and this meant that John did his shifts on garbage patrol.

On a cold, wet Vancouver evening Steve had left me tickets for a game against the Grizzlies. His mother, Jean, was also waiting to pick up her tickets. The wind added to our discomfort and she wasn’t dressed for the Vancouver winter. Most player’s mothers would have approached security for special treatment, but Jean kept a low profile and quietly waited for the Will-Call window to open. With parents like John and Jean, siblings like Martin and Joanne and friends like Simon Ibell it’s not surprising Steve Nash is a great guy. Now much of his precious free time away from basketball and his two new babies is devoted to the Steve Nash Foundation.

Steve hugging his mother Jean

Steve in Toronto recently to donate $100,000 of footwear & apparel to the Harbourfront Community Centre
www.stevenash.org

Basketball junkies might enjoy Dallas owner Mark Cuban’s 10 page explanation of why he did not re-sign Steve Nash.

The opening lines are, “How could you let Steve Nash go?”; “It’s a question I’m going to hear for a long time.” The hundreds of emails in response are also fun to read. They include, “We’ll just keep drinking Cuban’s Kool-Aid”.

Martin's grandson, Toby. The next Steve Nash?

:: Martin Collis

To sail the approximately 1500km around Vancouver Island is a major sail, nobody has ever rowed around the Island and to swim it was out of the question, until Rob Dyke and his friend Ian Scanlan decided to take a year out and support each other in an epic adventure.

In 2003 Ian attempted Everest solo, without oxygen, while Rob tried to circumnavigate his Island home and managed 900km before a rogue wave off the Brooks Peninsula picked him up like a rag doll and ripped his arm from its socket.

To put the scale of Rob’s swim in perspective, the city of Victoria built a significant rock monument to display a plaque commemorating Marilyn Bell’s 29.5km swim across the Juan de Fuca Strait from Port Angeles (USA) to Victoria. When Rob makes it round the Island I’ll expect nothing less than a building bearing his name.

The distance of the swim is daunting, so are the waves, tides, currents, jelly fish, the whirlpools and chafing from the wet suit, but it’s the cold that’s really scary. I have a background of research in immersion hypothermia and am very familiar with the face-breaking, breath-taking, limb-shaking, gut-aching effects of spending time in the local waters.

Rob wears a hooded wetsuit and goggles but that’s his only protection, no booties, no gloves and definitely no flippers. The thin layer of neoprene keeps hypothermia at bay, but after swimming 4 or 5 hours Rob’s face is swollen and his hands and feet are bloodless and pulpy and his deep body temperature is on its way down.

[Dr Martin Collis boards a Coast Guard helicopter
after spending 45 minutes in the cold waters off Port Angeles
during a hypothermia experiment”. Fall 1975]

In the Christmas 2004 issue of ‘Well’ I included the essay ‘Death’ by Stephen Canning. (If you missed this article it’s well worth reading). Stephen died on Mount Logan, but like Rob he was someone who, in Thoreau’s words, “Sucked the marrow out of life,”

Stephen wrote,

When I die, I want people to say that I inspired them. I don't care so much that they say I was a good man or a kind man or a happy man or a great man. I want them to say that they lived their life a little bit differently because of me. That they saw the world filled with a bit more adventure. That they were a little bit less afraid to do something that they truly wanted.

I’m sure Rob would say ‘amen’ to that. Although I suspect he would also like to be thought of as good and kind, which he is.

The Aquathon is a huge physical challenge, but Rob’s preparation was predominantly mental and spiritual. He went to Tibet to spend time with the mountains and the Buddhist monks and find deep inner strength. The Buddha said, “Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

The Buddhist response to pain is not to try and push it away but to move right inside it and Rob is finding himself less and less concerned with the cold and jelly fish stings, focusing instead on the meditative motion of swimming and his unique aquatic journey.

Rob’s preference is to be relatively low-tech and self-sufficient but the help of local sponsors in the form of wet suits, a Zodiac, nutrition, some accommodation and a GPS finder has made a significant logistical and financial difference. Investor’s Group have come on board as a sponsor and the Coast Guard and Canadian Military have added their support. This support is being co-coordinated by the Canadian Red Cross for whom Rob is raising funds.

We celebrated the first day’s swim with a Speakwell barbecue and there’s a fine bottle of champagne waiting for the end of the swim barbecue sometime in late summer or early fall.

You can follow his day-to-day progress, donate to the Red Cross, send Rob an email and check out the sponsors at the Island Aquathon web site, created by Number 41 Media.

Go, Rob, Go!

Update

Rob sent us the following email from the Parksville/Qualicum area today: "Almost 200 km of swimming behind me and it's been awesome. Met a small friend at the coast guard station in French Creek. I have had about 4 tough days in a row earning every kilometer. Hopefully the weather will change and give me a small break. Anyway keep checking the web site and know you are all in my thoughts."

:: Martin Collis

M J Reeves et al writing in Journal of the American Medical Association conclude that only 3% of 153,000 people from all 50 States live a basic healthy lifestyle. Their 4 criteria for a healthy lifestyle are:

1. Non-smoking
2. Healthy weight
3. Consuming five or more fruits and vegetables daily
4. Regular physical activity

76% were non-smoking, 40% maintained a healthy weight, 23% eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables per day and 22% take regular exercise. Only 3% did all four. It may well be less than that as the results were based on telephone surveys and many people lie.

This just reinforces the numerical inevitability that living a simple healthy lifestyle provides the health that nearly everyone wants and expects but few are prepared to live for.

Belloc and Breslow: Seven Health Factors for Longevity

Thirty-two years ago Belloc and Breslow questioned 7000 people of Alameda County, California, about lifestyle and determined 7 lifestyle habits/behaviors that added to the quantity and quality of life.

1. Breakfast in the morning.
2. Minimal snacking (Most food was consumed in a more formal meal setting).
3. Enough sleep. Minimum of 6 hours.
4. No smoking
5. Moderate alcohol. Average 2 or less drinks a day with no binge drinking.
6. Regular exercise, 30 minutes a day.
7. Weight maintenance.

They found that people who followed 6 or 7 of the 7 habits were likely to have an average of 10/11 extra years of quality life compared with those who practiced fewer than 3.

Belloc and Breslow created a “Health Age” based on one’s lifestyle. For instance if your chronological age is 40 and you follow all 7 habits you will have a ‘health age’ of 27. Whereas a 40-year-old practicing only 2 of the habits will have a ‘health age’ of 59, a dramatic shortening of life expectancy.

Canadians Continue to Get Fatter—Statistics Canada—6 July 2005

	Obese (BMI 30)
	1978/79	2004
Adults	14%	23%
Children (Aged 2-17)	3%	8%
Adolescents	3%	9%
Young Adults (25-34)	9%	21%
Seniors (over 75)	11%	24%

Not many silver linings in the above figures. The trend is probably exaggerated as most of the 78/79 figures were reported, while the 2004 figures were measured. Stats Canada found a correlation between the amount of screen time spent by teens and their likelihood of being overweight or obese.

Based on this study of 35,000 people, 60% of Canadians are either overweight (BMI 25+) or obese (BMI 30+).

The Mennonite Advantage

A recent study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information looked at fitness, fatness and activity levels of 3 groups of children aged 8 – 13.

1. Old Order Mennonite children from Ontario
2. Urban Saskatchewan children
3. Rural Saskatchewan children

The biggest single difference was that the Mennonite kids did more chores. They didn’t have a school PE program, they didn’t have an organized sports program, but they were active 18 minutes a day more than their non-Mennonite counterparts. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but adds up to 15,000 extra calories a year or about 40lbs of fat per person per decade. Not surprisingly the Mennonite kids were, on average, slimmer, fitter and stronger.

Manitoba School Children Need Help

The 2005 Statistics Canada survey found that Manitoba’s kids were among the heaviest in Canada, 8% were obese and another 18% overweight. In other words, about a quarter of the children in the province are overweight or obese. Healthy Living Minister, Theresa Oswald, commissioned a task force (don’t politicians love to create task forces?) Their solutions were that schools should develop “food and nutrition policies”, which will probably require another couple of task forces. In addition, Grade 11 and 12 students will now be required to complete 2 physical education or health credits. It’s not hard to imagine the heavy kids lining up to do a health class where you might have to read a bit and watch some videos, but you won’t have to work up a sweat. Oswald’s task force ruled out banning the sale of junk food and mandatory daily physical education classes. This should keep the fast food vendors happy, the curriculum planners and administrators can study ‘food and nutrition policies’ and the children will just get fatter. They need their own Jamie Oliver or perhaps check out the list created by the Strang Cancer Prevention Center in New York City for healthy children and healthy futures.

• Spend at least one hour a day being physically active.
• Spend less than two hours a day watching TV and playing video and computer games.
• Eat at least five fruits and vegetables a day.
• Snack more on healthy foods and less on junk foods and sweets.
• Drink or eat at least three low fat dairy foods a day.
• Drink at least two glasses/bottles of water a day instead of soft drinks.
• Eat less fast food (no more than twice a week) and make healthier fast food choices.
• Eat smaller portions.

The Thousand Families Study—Newcastle University, England

This study follows the health and development of children born in Newcastle in May and June 1947. So the subjects have now been followed for 58 years. People had hypothesized that susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes was related to poor growth in fetal and infant life, but the Newcastle study looking at 58 years of data found that lifestyle is overwhelmingly the most important factor in the development of Type 2 diabetes. They found that the higher the participant’s percent of body fat and waist/hip ratio the more likely they were to demonstrate increased insulin resistance,

You don’t have to read ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ to see a society that’s in danger of slip sliding away. We don’t need any more research studies to tell us that we have to be physically active and eat wholesome, natural foods. We spend billions and billions on sick care and a tiny fraction of that on physical activity and good nutrition. One of the reasons we export jobs to other countries is that companies cannot afford the health (sick) care premiums. We expect too little of our children in terms of them doing physical chores, walking to school and being active on a daily basis. It takes will, work and vision to change cultural patterns and maybe a realization that we’ve lost our way on our journey to the Promised Land. However, the theme of this issue is that anything is possible. Maybe if we could persuade presidents and prime ministers that Osama Bin Laden was trying to fatten us up and make us weak, we would quickly see funds made available and a Federal focus on producing a people who could be all that they could be.

Nick Hornby

M a j o r   B o o k s

Fever Pitch
High Fidelity
About a Boy
How to be Good
A Long Way Down

:: Martin Collis

Nick Hornby could be the patron saint of self-deprecation. Even today when he sells warehouses full of books and everything he touches seems to be successful he still thinks of himself as "a glass half-empty bloke". He describes his working day as "I have an office round the corner from my home. I arrive there between 9:30 and 10 a.m., smoke a lot, write in horrible little two-and-three sentence bursts, with five-minute breaks in between. Check for emails during each break, and get irritated if there aren't any. Go home for lunch. If I'm picking up my son I leave at 3:30. If not, I stay till six. It's all pretty grim! And so dull!" His son Danny is autistic and was born in 1992 just when it seemed that Nick was emerging from the wilderness of his young adult years. In Nick's words, "I graduated from college in 1979 and by 1989 I had achieved nothing whatsoever." He failed as a musician, teacher, screenwriter and boyfriend, and though he didn't actually fail at pumping gas he did it rather a long time for a Cambridge graduate. To use Nick's description, "Half my adult life was a total fuck-up." [Click Nick's photo on the right to open a separate window and listen to him introduce and read from "How to be Good"—note: mp3, 7.5MB]

If I could ask one celebrity to dinner it would be Nick Hornby; like me he's bilingual and can speak fluent football and music, he knows soccer in the same visceral way I do, he thinks pop music really, really matters and he's a wonderful observer of human frailties and strengths. Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian newspaper summarized Nick nicely in the introduction to an interview.

For a supposedly feelgood author, Nick Hornby's books aren't half miserable. Take Fever Pitch, his breakthrough memoir. As much as it is about football, it is about a man coping with depression, under-achieving and not belonging. Or High Fidelity, his first novel. Yes, it's the story of a music-obsessed geek, but it's also the story of an emotional illiterate who can't make head nor tail of life. Then there's About A Boy, which features a subplot about a mother trying not to commit suicide, and How To Be Good, which portrays a middle-aged couple striving unsuccessfully to find hope in their relationship.

The thing about all these books is that they are funny and warm and cute, and you don't have to mention the word depression when talking about them. Not so his latest. A Long Way Down is also comic, but there is no masking the subject here. This is depression in spades, or so you'd think. The novel has four narrators, all of them planning to kill themselves on New Year's Eve by jumping off the roof of a high-rise block in north London known as Toppers' House.

M o v i e s

Hornby's books are so visual and well observed that it seems inevitable that they all become movies. "Fever Pitch" starring Colin Firth was a gem about an intelligent man dealing with his passion for football (or maybe not dealing with it).

The book emerged from Nick's Monday sessions with a therapist in the late 80s, who would ask him about his weekend. He realized that the only thing that really mattered each weekend was whether Arsenal won or lost, which seemed pathetic but totally unavoidable. At first his therapist thought it was an avoidance technique or a joke until she realized the massive role that Arsenal played in Nick's head and hormonal system.

Somewhat improbably "Fever Pitch" won't go away, and it has recently been remade in a US-centric version by the Farrelly Brothers with Boston Red Sox taking the place of Arsenal. The perennially unfortunate Red Sox triggered a hasty re-write of part of the script when they won the World Series last year, and two of the stars from the film, Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, were seen celebrating at Fenway Park.

The next book and the next movie was "High Fidelity". This time the movie didn't do a Brit version first and just relocated the record store straight to Chicago. It didn't matter, it was wonderful. John Cusack as a Hornby-esque record geek nailed the part. The cast was dazzling; Jack Black was magnificent, Katherine Zeta Jones looked magnificent, I've always enjoyed Tim Robbins and Bruce Springsteen even has a cameo role. It's the Jack Black dialogue that still has space in my head.

Barry (Jack Black): We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive.
Customer: Do you have the song, "I just called to say I love you?" It's for my daughter's birthday.
Barry: Yeah, we have it.
Customer: Well, can I buy it?
Barry: No, actually you can't.
Customer: Why not?
Barry: God. Do you even know your daughter? There's no way she likes that song!...Oops, is she in a coma?

A stage version of High Fidelity is now in the works. The writing team of Amanda Green and Tom Kitt are adapting the book for the Broadway stage as a musical. They recently premiered several of the songs in a concert at Birdland. One of the backers of this enterprise is Disney.

"About a Boy" starred Hugh Grant as a man who picks up single mothers by posing as a single parent himself with a borrowed son. It must be great for Nick Hornby, who is smallish, bald, smokes and approaching 50 to be able to create these autobiographical (I'm not suggesting Nick picked up single mums) characters and then have them portrayed by some of the sexiest men in movies.

The movie rights to Nick's next two novels, "How to be Good" and "A Long Way Down" have both been snapped up. Johnny Depp's production company bought "A Long Way Down" and Columbia pictures have acquired "How to be Good", and I can think of who I'd like to cast in the lead roles, specifically Helen Mirren as the 'good' doctor and Robin Williams as 'Good News', the guru. Nick donates all his income from movie rights and screenplays to Treehouse, which he co-founded in 1997 with other parents of severely autistic kids.

I think it's appropriate that Nick wrote "How to be Good" because I think he's figured it out and so does Zadie Smith, who wrote in a Time magazine article,

Hornby believes that beautiful songs, beautiful books and yes, the Beautiful Game (soccer in case you don't know) are the great forces. He loves good stuff so much that one might call him the European Ambassador of Goodness.

I wrote Ethiopian Eyes at the time of the original Live Aid concert in July ’85. I was in New York with my family and I remember looking through the Village Voice to see if there was any good music in the Village clubs. The only name that attracted me was Lonnie Mack , a guitarist who did a great instrumental version of ‘Memphis’, but I decided to take the family out to dinner. Next morning I was stunned to see who did drop by to see Lonnie Mack at the Lone Star Café and do a warm up jam for Live Aid. None less than my hero Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. I knew Mick before he was a Stone when he was my assistant counselor at a summer camp in England. (I got the job from his dad who was a Phys. Ed. Prof.). His father told him, “Music’s fine for a hobby, but you’re not going to make a living at it.” Who would have guessed that Bob and Mick would still be performing and filling arenas in their 60s. I guess the term “The 60s” has a whole new meaning for them.

It’s easy to by cynical about LiveAid and Live8 but John Doyle provides an interesting Irish perspective on why it’s Bob Geldof and Bono who have such a concern for world hunger.

The Song of the Shirt

I like rhythm and rhyme and a certain type of narrative poetry. Thomas Hood is regarded as a lesser poet of the romantic era, but he had a strong social conscience, probably as a result of his own financial and health related struggles. Legislation and media exposure have eliminated the worst of the sweatshops from developed countries, now we hide them away in 3rd world countries where ‘The Song of the Shirt’ still has meaning.

	The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt." "Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof! And work—work—work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's Oh! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work! "Work—work—work Till the brain begins to swim; Work—work—work Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream! "Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch—stitch—stitch, In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt. "But why do I talk of Death? That Phantom of grisly bone, I hardly fear its terrible shape, It seems so like my own— It seems so like my own, Because of the fasts I keep; Oh, God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap! "Work—work—work! My labour never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread—and rags. That shatter'd roof—and this naked floor— A table—a broken chair— And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there! "Work—work—work! From weary chime to chime, Work—work—work— As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd. As well as the weary hand. "Work—work—work, In the dull December light, And work—work—work, When the weather is warm and bright— While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me with the spring. "Oh! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet— With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet, For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal! "Oh! but for one short hour! A respite however brief! No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, But only time for Grief! A little weeping would ease my heart, But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!" With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,— Would that its tone could reach the Rich!— She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"
“The Bridge of Sighs” by Thomas Hood Mad from life's history, Glad to death's mystery, Swift to be hurl'd – Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world!

Here Comes That Rainbow Again

Music and lyrics by Kris Kristofferson
From the album “Essential Kris Kristofferson”
available through Amazon.com
and Amazon.ca

The scene was a small roadside cafe,
The waitress was sweeping the floor.
Two truck drivers drinking their coffee.
And two Okie kids by the door.
"How much are them candies?" they asked her.
"How much have you got?" she replied.
"We've only a penny between us."
"Them's two for a penny," she lied.

And the daylight grew heavy with thunder,
With the smell of the rain on the wind.
Ain't it just like a human.
Here comes that rainbow again.

One truck driver called to the waitress,
After the kids went outside.
"Them candies ain't two for a penny."
"So what's it to you?" she replied.
In silence they finished their coffee,
And got up and nodded goodbye.
She called: "Hey, you left too much money!"
"So what's it to you?" they replied.

And the daylight was heavy with thunder,
With the smell of the rain on the wind.
Ain't it just like a human.
Here comes that rainbow again.

"She gets it on like the easter bunny...
He ain't got laid in a month of sundays..."

Difficult Beginnings
by Jonathan Willcocks

My early life experiences were not unlike the troubled and delinquent young men I subsequently came to lead at the Porteau Camp. I've seen many a profile of young offenders that resembled my own. I grew up in England where I was considered a 'problem kid' who didn't fit in. I was teased a lot, got into fights, acted out and moved to several different schools in my first 4 years of grade school. I had loving parents but there were marital difficulties, which resulted in a separation and a decision that I should be sent to live with my grandparents and relatives in Canada, while my younger brother and sister would stay in England and live with my mum. It was hard not to feel like the odd one out. However, the Canadian experience worked for me, I enjoyed school more in Canada than in England and invested alot of energy into soccer, where I learned that passion, perseverance and practice paid off in terms of performance and recognition.

My Irish grandfather provided me with what might be called 'tough love' today. He was strict and believed in structure and stability, but at the same time was loving and supportive. When I became frustrated with his discipline and expectations he would quietly reach out and touch my heart and say "Courage in the heart my son". It was not easy for a boy to see, but my 'Granda' gave me the consistency and confidence I needed to deal with the hand life had dealt me. In the middle of the word 'confidence' is 'fide' meaning faith and my 'Granda's' faith in me enabled me to believe in myself and my own abilities.

In some ways I was like a refugee getting a chance in a new country, and like many immigrants I embraced the opportunities that came my way. I loved the access to outdoor recreation in Canada, and I liked the classless society in which hard work paid off in school and in the workplace.

Holidays were important to me because I went back to England to spend time with my parents. Outdoor experiences were a feature of many of our holidays, which took us to Wales, Scotland and Ireland camping, hiking, fishing and caving. One pivotal trip occurred when I was 15 when my Dad took me on a 3 week Outward Bound trip to the Outer Hebrides in Northern Scotland. We had beached our sea-going landing craft, set up our base camp and it was time to focus on physical skills assessment on day two. We were given a test and I had to run over to the nearby Loch Na Cleavag to do my swim and kayak test. We all took turns running over the wet green grass and through the gray misty countryside alone and running back. It was a long run over 2 hills, through the pouring rain, in bare feet, wearing just my swimming trunks. I remember the sheep staring at me, the rain numbing my red skin, the wind chill, and trying to avoid the bits of barbed wire and mostly trying to avoid the many piles of slimy sheep scat, and then of course jumping in the freezing cold water, only then to return over the hills. Over those 3 weeks we received 52 cm of rain, lost 12 gale force tents to wind storms, were flooded out of our base camps twice, and we never saw blue sky. And it still made for an incredible experience!—the people, the songs, the games, the warm food, the sheep shearing with local shepherds, the mountain climbing, the wildlife, ocean expeditions, mountain rescue training, caving, crab trapping, and the overall feeling of looking back to say "We survived Cravadale '86!" I knew that I had passed a tough test in my own eyes and the eyes of my Dad and I know that somewhere in the future I'd want to share this sort of experience (in somewhat friendlier weather conditions) with others.

I returned to Canada to start grade 10 with the feeling that if I could handle the Hebrides at their worst nothing could stop me. It was in this grade that I started doing very well at school, worked 2 jobs, payed room and board, and played for several highly competitive soccer teams. When I graduated grade 12, I was the President of the Student Council, I won the Merit Cup for Leadership and Community Contribution, and was awarded 3 scholarships for university entrance. That year I had also been elected to represent the province of British Columbia on a 6 day trip to Ottawa to learn about Canadian politics and where I was recognized in Ottawa as a "Special Citizen of Canada". Responsibility and leadership was to become an over-riding theme for my life. Lists like this sound a bit like a job application but I think they're more of a reflection of my gratitude for having the opportunity for a good education and to live life to its fullest.

These 'anchoring' memories, that revolve around embracing challenge and experiencing success in the midst of adversity, created a meaningful childhood for me. I realize that if it wasn't for these memories and experiences I would not be the adult that I am today. My adult self sees life as a positive adventure. I see adversity—physical, emotional and social—as opportunities to reflect and learn based on my experiences during childhood. "A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for." (Anon) This quote has always given me a tremendous amount of inspiration, especially when embracing risk-taking and facing new challenges.

I believe that our approach to life is based on our ability to reflect on our lives and frame our experiences so that we can create meaningful connections from our past to our present situations. Our level of success is dependent on this approach to life, how we choose to perceive ourselves, our situations, and our faith, trust, and courage in ourselves.

In my third year of university, after 2 summers of forest fire fighting, and several seasons of playing soccer, racing mountain bikes and leading UVic's Outdoors club, I saw a small job posting that read something like "Wilderness Instructors Needed: fit young men and positive role models required for shift-work in highly intense outdoor environment working with young offenders. You are required to have a good work ethic, experience on sports teams, strong leadership abilities, and exceptional wilderness skills. Pre-requisite 80 hours volunteer work." There was something about this posting that acted like a natural magnet. I was drawn to phoning the number immediately. Within one week, I had had my interview and had already completed my 80 hours hours of volunteer work in this strange wilderness camp in Squamish. I worked on camp projects and completed both a mountain trip and a canoe trip. In these five volunteer days, with my group, I had done over 3500 push-ups, run over 30 miles, canoed over 20 miles, backpacked over 25 miles and wanted more!

The Porteau Camp Experience

Porteau Camp provided an environment to challenge and maybe provide an alternative direction for delinquent youth. Although I did not like the 'old-school' mentality of punishment and consequences, I knew these young men had wronged many people and deserved discipline and structure, which was often absent from their lives. They needed to complete this mandated probational experience to turn them around and make them more accountable and responsible people in society. My own past experiences of adversity and subsequent success matched the strategy of Porteau Camp and I was up for the challenge of the job to help them through their learning and transformational process. I wanted to positively impact others, in a kind, compassionate, and respectful way. I knew that it was this type of environment of hard work, team-work, adversity, positive learning and role-modeling that can facilitate character building and positive leadership skills. I worked full time at Porteau Camp while I finished my degree in Kinesiology and then for 4 years after I graduated. I became the youngest senior camp leader at the age of 25 and by the time I was 28, I had seen over 1200 young men graduate from the program with new skills, a newly-realized sense of confidence, and a more positive attitude. Many had the self-belief that they could choose to be take responsibility for their lives and be successful, instead of blaming external circumstance and becoming a victim. Again it is about how one approaches life that truly makes the difference.

I also saw myself undergo many changes in my own levels of maturity and leadership. Often, when I had time to reflect, I would wonder 'who had been changed the most, the youth or I?' I remember, during our times of shared consequences or experiencing hard physical stress - whether it was doing push-ups in the pouring rain in the middle of a cold night, or backpacking up steep mountains in the heat of the summer without a rest or water-break - that I would think that we were all facing our own demons and climbing our own inner mountains. In teaching these young men to work hard, to strive for the good things in life, and to never give up, I would experience my own teachings manifest themselves more and more in my own actions and behaviors. Even though I had been learning about and living by these principles since I moved to Canada, directly teaching them reinforced the principles in my own life.

I would think how these boys lives were similar to my own at their age. In some way, I too had been mandated to live a new life when I had been sent to live in Canada. I came to honour my family's decision, knowing that facing the challenges then had now given me the compassion and understanding for these young adolescent teenagers who were also struggling.

After over 30 years in operation, Porteau Camp closed in 1999 with a changing government mandate. I was there at the last graduation at camp, and was saddened knowing that this experience of Porteau was over. I also knew that I would continue to always carry the Porteau spirit forward into my own work and as part of my values and principles of living.

In 1997 I had started my own company here in Vancouver. It was with Pinnacle Pursuits that I knew my flame would burn and through which I could continue affecting lives positively. I wanted to work with people who were not sent to me but people who wanted to challenge themselves and build courage in the face of adversity; people who wanted to have fun while they learned, and who wanted become more passionate, inspired, and stronger leaders in their own life.

Now in our 8th year of business, this is exactly what we are doing—endeavoring to help people to become better human beings and leaders—thousands of people worldwide each year. But now, it is with my wife Cheryl, with whom I have the pleasure of leading the company forward. Her skills, expertise, and life experiences are quite different to mine, but she is also a learning-leader and our differences paired with our common belief and vision, are what makes us such a great team. The two of us have created an incredible staff of international experts in adventure programming, team-building and leadership development.

Founded on the principles of experiential learning—learning by doing with reflection—we design workshops and programs that are action-based, challenging, inspirational and transformational. We design and frame group experiences that are meaningful and relevant to the group's real life living, learning, and working situations. By creating an environment conducive for the participants to safely experience challenge as a group, we are then able to facilitate an experience where they are able to reflect upon their insights and apply these learnings and successes back into their own situations in life. The reflection and then application are where the breakthroughs occur in the learning process and where the magic truly lies.

We have created a model that reflects this learning evolution that I call the 'Learning-Leader Cycle'. The successful learning-leader develops their ability, skills, knowledge, and wisdom through this dynamic learning process. The following is a diagram that illustrates the model where experience-reflection-application is paramount in overall leadership growth and development.

I believe that one of the factors that determines an individual's leadership potential and success is how regularly they use this model and how willing they are to intentionally create experiences that provide these learning opportunities

As I look upon my life, I am humbled as I find myself doing the same work, based on the same values and principles that affected me so deeply since childhood. I feel honoured and am moved continuously when I am invited into people's lives to help facilitate their leadership challenges, opportunities, and successes. Through our team-learning and leadership development programs, I am now creating 'anchoring' moments for others to fall back on and use to enrich their own leadership development and potential.

The next step is about continuing to explore my own limits—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and continuing to create 'anchoring moments', from which I can use to reflect upon and strengthen my own wisdom. I am exploring balance—balance between company growth and maintaining my own inner growth—so that I can stay inspired and lead effectively with meaning, purpose, and passion.

It is important for me that I continue learning through life and business challenges, and that I also share these learnings with my staff team and encourage them to share their challenges and learnings with me. Then we can create models on how we can all learn better together and share these models with other organizations.

As a company, since we provide experiences for groups that are designed to challenge them in some way, and subsequently help them create a more effective and successful team, it is important and fitting that we continue to embrace challenges and change in our own organization—we must walk our talk. I take this responsibility very seriously, and know that by embracing life challenges wholeheartedly, with an undying positive approach, it will continue to make me a stronger person, a better leader, and that ultimately my business will flourish as it is being lead from a place of integrity.

There is an old Chinese proverb that states, "Strong timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees." I first read this on a plaque that hung over the hearth at Porteau Camp in the winter of 1993. It affects me to this day as I reflect on my life and continue to make sense of all the challenges and opportunities that life has to offer to be a successful learning-leader.

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2006