Squish Squash: Am I a Bad Mom?
Imagine you are playing a highly competitive game of squash against your 14 year old daughter…who happens to be nationally ranked. It’s a tournament and it’s the men’s division, as she has to play in the A league. I can’t recall if it was the finals or semi-finals, but we ended up playing each other. […]
Janet & Jeff Do Dawson
I was working in Dawson City, Yukon leading the planning for a major gathering of private and institutional investors and mine owners from around the world. It was around the end of the conference, and it had been a long few days and late nights. My son, Jeff, was with me and sleeping in the […]
100 Chairs
Lesson: Find a Mentor or Two or Three; Learn from Them Spectacular leadership fascinates me. It’s not a skill we all possess, or can even acquire. Over time I have read a great deal of books on famous leaders of the past and present, all utterly intriguing – from Genghis Khan to Winston Churchill to […]
In The Presence of Greatness
Have you ever been in the presence of greatness? I have, and when it happens there is no doubt. Now you may wonder who or even how one ends up in the presence of greatness or what exactly is the presence of greatness. I was fortunate, it happened when I was 16 and to this […]
High Class Hookers
Lesson: Laugh it Off Work in the mining industry definitely takes you to interesting places, and I would like to think the bar I ended up in Geneva, Switzerland, had nothing to do with mining. I just ended up there because I was marketing a company. Little did I know! After a day of presentations […]
A Raven Funeral
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I once had the honour of organizing a Potlatch or two. On the day of the 1st Potlatch, with thousands of people planning on attending, I was panicking and pacing. It was the Grand Chief of Yukon First Nations who asked me if I had done everything possible […]
Dinosaur Valley
Lesson: There is always a lesson. I love storytelling, I love listening to stories and I love telling stories. Stories are lessons to educate or entertain; stories pass on culture, tradition, history and family information. Stories build and maintain communities. Stories are sacred. If I had to pick one life lesson acquired from all my […]
The Prophecy
I am going to see my mother this month and have been thinking about life’s decisions that take you away from the home of birth to the home of choice. My mom survived two rounds of cancer and on round two, with me lying there in the hospital beside her as she awaited surgery, she […]
Where Have All the Mining Towns Gone?
As I sit in a beautiful Colorado setting, my view overlooks a wonderful little tourism town. The narrow gauge train leaves town every morning and I have the pleasure of listening to it chug along with the sound of the engine echoing through the valley and right up to my deck. I love the US […]
Unemployed or Unemployable
Lesson: Sometimes a bad situation leads to something better. At one time I was an unemployed, single Mom with a mortgage and 2 kids active in their chosen sports at a national level. Come to think of it, at the same time, I was probably unemployable. You see, when you live in a remote town […]