Category Archives: Lifes Lessons

Lifes Lessons

Colleen Jones My Thoughts

I didn’t meet this woman, Colleen Jones, but I know of her and I’ve watched her in action as both a curling skip and as a reporter. I admired her competitive spirit, her sincerity, and her humanity. She was a fully genuine person and for those who knew her personally – they will all be grieving deeply this evening at news of her untimely death at 65.

My memories of her via TV are not vivid because they go quite a ways back but I have this gnawing and yearning to share as I recollect that central to her character was the way the she treated others. Curling is a game where players make shots and miss shots. Some shots go awry but then produce a favorable result. Some shots can lose a team games. She was the skip and thrived on having the last shot. Leaders step up to this kind of calling. Good curlers and leaders know how to keep a vibe when things go off the rails. They know how to uplift a disappointed player. Colleen had this going on like no other. She had other peoples interests at heart seemingly at every moment in her very raw unpretentious way. This is my memory of Colleen Jones.

Lifes Lessons

The Pathetic Sadness Of Fraud – Magliocca Story

You have to dig real deep to find the root of why someone would attempt to defraud his neighbour (fellow city tax payers) of five grand by padding expense reports for reimbursement. This is the Joe Magliocca story – a municipal councillor in Calgary. He was convicted today.

As a tax accountant, it’s very rare that I encounter any individual who proactively engages in deceit in order to gain an advantage via the tax system. Whenever in doubt, folks will present a transaction in order to determine its treatment. Whenever I witness something questionable, in the vast majority of the time it has to do with an individual’s inattentiveness or carelessness. Some folks do not exhibit the requisite patience to record keep meticulous and accountants / bookkeepers become adept at sensing these personalities. If you are one of these personalities who believe that your time is too valuable to spend with the minutiae particular to your own personal finance and decide to delegate the tasks then ensure to deploy a control mechanism in order to ensure a quality output. Examples of such controls would be spot check and reports. 

It’s hard to conceive what a person would be thinking when purposefully conducting an act of fraud. Any perceived benefit far outweighs the penalties and loss of reputation. Here is one hard reality that every taxpayer should come to learn. If you habitually file late or if you draw money from a corporation and fail to file or if you represent a claim in which you are not eligible….you may be perceived no differently than Mr. Magliocca in the eyes of the law.  Income tax regulations deal with terms such as tax avoidance and tax evasion and penalties are applied in accordance with how you appear absent of a judge or jury.

Convictions failed to surface during the “Panama Papers” investigation but these off shore corporate directors likely have much deeper pockets for paying lawyers than you. I know of one class action tax case still unresolved some fifteen plus years on whereby you would have thought that a Statue of Limitations would apply. 

Mr. Joe Magliocca looks to appeal his conviction.

Never be anyone who wrongly accuses, gaslights someone in despair, purposely or accidentally commits a fraud. However; do hold people to account and look to build trusted warm relationships because we all need more of those.    

Free Enterprise, Lifes Lessons

Missteps At Retailer Target

The business model is fairly simple. Buy in bulk, leverage up with volume, and provide pricing at a discount to the market. When Target came to Canada, I was aghast at what they were asking of me at the checkout. They wanted more than what I was willing to provide for the transaction and I suspect I wasn’t the only one. I believe this one and only service related policy was central to the public backlash of Target here in Canada thereby prompting discomfort between consumers and management. The Americans seemed to have thought they could assume things of Canadians for which American discount shoppers were more easily complicit.

More recently, we see that there has been perception growing that Target through its silence may have changed course in regard to it policy around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Sales are off and the stock is down some thirty plus percent since the start of 2025. Certainly, there are other attributions causing the price to fall but I’m reminded tonight that you cannot treat people poorly and expect their loyalty. Big box shoppers will be particularly acute to any change in DEI policy whether perceived or otherwise. 

After my Target shopping experience in years back, I was little surprised that the company determined that they were mistaken in their quest to expand north. Indifferent management deaf to the culture of the customer will lose. This year, shareholders of Target unbeknownst to the inner dynamics of their company’s corporate culture have taken losses and have every good reason to be asking tough questions.      

Lifes Lessons, Philosophy, Politics

Ambivalence Must Now Be Shown The Door

You grew up in a household which taught values. You learned them and you now hold them dear. You also use them on a daily basis but you’ve seldom been tasked to deploy them within your macro social environment. Now is the time for that.  

You see…not everyone is as blessed as you. Some had not been blessed with a functioning household infused with integrity. Some folks now peer through a dark lens void from the loving canvas of a warm home. Cynicism has overtaken some of them so that their judgment has become clouded with apathy. Some have come to trust no one. Imagine that! 

You cannot allow the cynicism to develop into policy like it has recently in the United States of America. You cannot rationalize complicity and succumb to the lowest common denominator of life. You cannot exempt yourself from expression because of fear. You must speak. You must now express those values which have brought you abundance in spirit and peace in your heart. Help others come to know that covetousness and greed imperil and that love conquers all.     

Lifes Lessons, Sport

A Boxing Death In 2025

We are not evolving as human beings. I suspect we are actually regressing in intellect and in conscience. I have never paid to see a boxing match except for Rocky in the theatre as a child. I did see a nephew once in bout. I don’t understand an effort of beating someone up as sport. If I was accosted physically by someone on the street, I would see this as a perfect place for inflicting utter harm on another but not in a ring surrounded by spectators. The martial arts have a strong modicum of respect and conduct entrenched and disciplines are oriented around self defense. In other words, boxing and martial arts are two different things.


In a core subject within my Physical Education discipline back in the early ’80’s we had taken up the merits of boxing in a debate. My position then was as it is now. Don’t do it. Don’t support it. It doesn’t serve society or the individual. There are so many other ways to compete physically and mentally which don’t have the end goal of uncivilly harming someone else’s good health.


Why do we pay to watch? Why do boxers pursue the sport? Do men and women box and pay to watch boxing because of some neanderthal like instinct of survival where fighting is perceived as a means for self sufficiency and perhaps expressive toward the onlooking female as way to gain favor. Of course, this motive contrasts with the cooperative ideal of a civil society whereby conscience in a higher form may morally restrict unleashing unnecessary physical harm on another human being.


In our quest for freedom, do we act beyond the conscienable? Do we exempt moral suasion in the face of a perceived overriding freedom and quest for profit? Do we actually possess intuitively the capacity to empathize wholly with the plight of another when another is carried from a ring on a stretcher? Can an individual be guided intuitively at all by an awareness of spirit extending beyond the self or is any effort only fictionally derived from parent / teacher coaching? If we are more than blood, bone, and water….where from do emotions such as guilt, greed, and love manifest? What must we think of the love lost by the death of a boxer? Having paid to watch boxing where a person dies, what are we to think of ourselves?


The fellow who recently died was an Irishman named John Cooney aged 28. It’s very sad. Thinking of all who knew him today and all his good deeds throughout his 28 years.