I am beginning to think my office is a museum. After thirty-five years in practice in Almonte, and having assumed the practice and professional effects of Mr. Raymond A. Jamieson, QC who in 1976 retired at the age of 82 after 56 years of practice in Almonte and who was himself the successor to the practices of Percy A. Greig (1903-1962), Harold Jamieson (1892-1916), Alfred M. Greig (1873-1913) and Joseph Jamieson (1869-1893), there are ancient artifacts and collections of one thing or another here.

Among the paraphernalia is a large book containing drawings (on linen) of the “Water Works, Fire Protection” and houses and buildings in Almonte, colour-coded to illustrate whether they’re made of brick, stone or wood. The book, which is dated January 1950 at a time when the population of Almonte was stated to be 2,628, is described as an “Insurance Plan” being the property of the Underwriters’ Survey Bureau Limited, lent to Mr. Percy A. Greig on the following conditions: “That the plan is to be kept in good order, that it is to be used only in connection with business of Companies, Members of the Canadian Fire Underwriters’ Association, and to be returned on request”. I believe the book was used by Mr. Jamieson when he acted for the General Fire Insurance Company of Paris, for which body corporate I also have an antique glass paperweight.

Mr. Raymond A. Jamieson (the “A” was for Algernon by the way) wore quite a few hats during his lengthy career in Almonte. Foremost was his profession as a lawyer. When handling a real estate transaction, in addition to doing the conveyancing, he was well connected to people such as the late Dr. Johnson of Carleton Place who had seemingly endless piles of money to lend on the security of a first mortgage. I recall having seen advertisements posted by Mr. Jamieson in the Almonte Gazette proclaiming the availability of funds. And, as noted, Mr. Jamieson could also arrange your household fire insurance. He further acted as Clerk of the Town of Almonte which I fully suspect explains how he was able to secure the large 1893 Town of Almonte parchment map – one of two only, the other being in the Land Registry Office. The map now hangs in my inner office.Mr. Jamieson also acted as solicitor for the Town of Almonte. Note, for example, that in 1953 Mr. Jamieson was witness at the execution of an Agreement between the Corporation of the Town of Almonte and the Board of Park Management whereby “the trusts and special purposes mentioned in the grant of certain lands to the said corporation by the executors and trustees of the last will and testament of Winnifred Knight Dunlop Gemmill are hereby annulled”
This Agreement was part of The Town of Almonte Act, 1953 Statutes of Ontario, Chap. 110, a private member’s bill in the Ontario Legislature to set aside the terms of the last Will & Testament of Winnifred Gemmill to enable “Gemmill Park” to be used in part for residential housing. Gemmill was one of the rich British people who operated a woollen mill in town. The persons behind the private member’s bill included George M. Dunfield (Mayor) and Robert J. France (Clerk). The Chairman of The Board of Park Management was Geo. L. Comba and the Secretary pro tem was A. Levitan. It was a condition of this assault upon the will that The Board of Park Management “shall erect and at all times maintain upon the park property a suitable Memorial Tablet reading: Gemmill Park, donated by Winnifred Knight Dunlop Gemmill of the Town of Almonte, formerly the property of James Dunlop Gemmill of Almonte, deceased”.

Hanging on a wall of the office is a Crown Patent which distinguishes itself not so much by its date (July 3, 1828) but by the excellent condition of the large beeswax seal appended to the Patent by a faded ribbon. On the seal is clearly visible the word “Imperial” over the icon of an ornate anchor.

On another wall there hangs a picture of the graduating class of 1921 at Osgoode Hall which is singular in that it positions the 9 graduating ladies in a cluster, not alphabetically as with the gentlemen. I also display a photograph of J. C. Smithson on the day of his retirement as Land Registrar of Lanark No. 26,before amalgamation with the Perth office, Lanark No. 27. Coincidentally the photo captures Jack registering his last document which happened to be one of mine, a Deed (though whose I cannot discern from the photograph).

The office furniture, much of which I inherited from Mr. Jamieson’s office, includes a sturdy but uncomfortable bench in the waiting room. I’ve added a royal blue velvet covered cushion made by Mrs. Cynthia Guerard of My Upholstery to improve its comfort, though the back is still uncommonly rigourous. The bench came from Bank of Montreal across the street, and was, I am informed, where people sat patiently awaiting an audience with the manager. When the bank decided many years ago to convert its appearance to modernity, Mr. Jamieson enquired of the manager whether he could purchase the oak bench. The manager said he couldn’t put a price on it, or he wasn’t able to sell it, so he gave it to Mr. Jamieson for one dollar.

Mr. Jamieson also acquired a large safe in an odd way. The safe was being sold at a Sheriff’s Execution auction to satisfy a debtor’s creditors. I recall Mr. Jamieson having told me that the sale took place in Carp or possibly in some rural venue in the former Township of West Carleton. Anyway, when Mr. Jamieson expressed an interest in the safe and enquired as to its price, the Sheriff asked, “Are you going to move it?”, to which Jamieson said “Yes”, and the Sheriff immediately replied, “One dollar!”.

I now have three safes in my office, the smallest having been originally employed in the offices of the late Albert T. Gale who founded Gale Real Estate Company. The middle size safe – the most elegant – was one which Mr. Jamieson must have bought for himself. I learned more about that particular safe when a refined lady client was sitting in my office preparing to sign some documents. She turned her head to examine the safe, whereupon she exclaimed, “I didn’t know we made those!”. I asked who “we” was, and she explained, “I’m a McCulloch; that was my grandfather”. The florid writing on the safe was “The Goldie & McCulloch Co., Limited of Galt”. When I asked what “we” did make, she looked coldly at me and said, “Boilers!”.

In addition to having the Revised Statutes of Ontario going back to a two-volume collection of 1897, which I suspect was the first to be produced, I also have the Upper Canada Queen’s Bench Reports from 1845. Those case reports eventually morphed into what is today called the Ontario Reports. Just as the modern case law has much to do with the automobile, the ancient texts had much to do with horses. In addition I have an entire collection from the 1930’s of Halsbury’s Laws of England, which is to this day a reliable and incisive collection of the British Common Law. In many instances the footnotes are longer than the main text. I have a collection of numerous corporate seals, among them, The Rosebank Cheese and Butter Co-Operative Limited (Rosebank was the lovely former name of the nearby Village of Blakeney), Royal Scarlet Chapter L.O.L. No. 482, Stella, Ontario, Albert Gale (Ottawa) Ltd., G. H. Hill Motors Limited (one of the best know General Motors dealerships in Almonte for many years) and Mississippi Curling Rink.

Once you are bitten by the technology bug there are seemingly endless possibilities to feed the disease which is the fruit of the sting. The only governor of the ensuing wild gyrations is the knowledge that, apart from the capital cost of the product, there are always associated “connection” costs which, while seldom overwhelming, are nonetheless one more in the rising pile of automatic deductions from one’s long-suffering bank account. It makes you stop to think, “Do I really need this?”

Competing with the economics of the indulgence is the innate sense of competition which so many of the A-type personalities who are attracted to these devices secretly or unwittingly harbour. After all its gratification is more than just having a “cool” product. If we are to believe the media hype and even intelligent marketing of specialist magazine and newspaper reviews, these devices help us to work better and smarter, words which are a drug to the aggressive entrepreneur. Combine this conviction to modernity with the paranoia of being left behind, and you have all the ingredients required for a Saturday morning rush to the nearest Apple store to gratify the urge!

Have you been to an Apple store lately? It’s like visiting a lunar living room. Sparseness, plastic and chrome just about sum it up. There is absolutely nothing superfluous to the dedicated purpose of computers and gadgets. You do not risk losing the least bit of attention to the subject. There is nothing else to preoccupy you. Compare it to giving a dog a dish of food in an empty room. What’s not to like! The only reluctance I have about the place is that it is so decidedly adolescent that I almost feel as though I were a trespasser, or even worse, a criminal in a forbidden world of white-washed youth, although I accept that it is one of the failings of the baby-boomers that we are unwilling to relinquish our hold on the formative years.

Inevitably, however, the debate comes back to the fundamental question of whether I need to cart yet another piece of luggage about my person, as fashionable as it may make one feel to have a lap-top or other device slung over one’s shoulder (assuming of course that your knees haven’t become too weak to carry the added weight). Pointed deliberations about the essential need of these devices are like cold water on the heated acts of a frantic stock broker. The task, however, is not an easy one, given that it is so effortless to rationalize the expenditure of another $700 these days, a small price to preserve one’s place in the perpetual line-up to technology heaven. The devices further represent the puerile attraction we’re all so reluctant to admit, and to abandon involving the toy element.

Most of us have by now exhausted our original fascination with automobiles, ski-doo’s, sea-doo’s, ATVs and lawn tractors. Computer toys have the advantage of being not only highly personal (we don’t have to share them with the kids) but also highly portable (we can take them like a Teddy bear wherever we go). Yet one still must ask, “Do I really need this?” The question is almost indelicate, like asking Elizabeth Taylor whether she really needs another ring. Rubbish! It’s not about need at all! And who at our age needs to be told what to do!

So much of growing older is about defining one’s limits, not necessarily in a restrictive way, but in the manner of characterization. How do we see ourselves? And how do we want others to see us? Computers and gadgets help us define ourselves by enabling us to jump with both feet into the world of technology, easily bandying about the words PDF and USB as though they were second nature to us; or, we can recoil from the consumer gluttony sponsored by the latest commercial fiends, trading under the names of Microsoft, Apple, Rogers and Telus. We are able to get a grip on what really matters and snap our fingers at this popular madness.

And yet I’d really like an iPad.

We all know those rose-cheeked folk whom one suspects as having been born with a riding crop in hand and who profess to have no regrets. They invariably adopt a firmness of purpose and are prepared to re-enact every particular of their ineffable lives. I’m sorry, but my inclination is rather to let well enough alone. What’s done is done! Indeed even a bit of camouflaging dust thrown upon the tracks of the past is not in my opinion either unmerited or undesirable. Frankly there are things I never want to do again. Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t to my knowledge any unpardonable offence to hide. There are simply certain dramas the repetition of which I can cheerfully bear the deprivation.

Take, for example, school. With respect to our devoted educators, as buoyant as one might become upon the subject in retrospect, I ask you, who in their right mind can honestly say that they liked school! I mean, what’s there to like about having to remain mum and glued to a singularly uncomfortable bit of pine plank for prolonged periods with nothing more refreshing on the horizon than knowing that later you’ll have to spend hours memorizing the principles which have just been paraded before you. It’s a sentence, not a learning experience! For all the enthralling things which have been uttered in song and poetry about reading, writing and arithmetic, I have to say that the experience is more a fantasy supported by voodoo folklore and failing memory than anything else. Back then, school was for most of us nothing short of a hardship to be endured. So humdrum was the undertaking (though I thankfully survived it and thus escaped a condemnation which would likely have been worse by comparison) that I would, for example, never consider going back to school for any amount of structured learning.
There are nonetheless certain individuals who spoil the averages by positively pining for higher learning – consider the chap who after a career as a bureaucrat decided to study theology. But those hyperboles are diverting more for their infrequency than otherwise. Perhaps in one’s latter years, the classroom holds other attraction, but to my thinking the trade-off is disproportionally against the likelihood of advantage. In any event the whole point of getting older is to cultivate the nuances of one’s private philosophy, something which requires the absence of interference except from the learned minds of the past specifically by way of leisurely examination of the ancient texts in the comfort of one’s drawing room. There comes a time to hang up the runners and ruminate upon yesteryear.

While getting a job is right up there with acquiring an education, the process is distinctly not something I wish to repeat either. My particular aversion to the enterprise is compounded by my inherent lack of political will, by which I mean I am more individualistic than corporate. I am not prepared to sacrifice my principles by acting in the interests of status within an organization. My object in life has always been to be independent and self-reliant even to the point of compromising, if necessary, creature comforts in order to preserve dominion over the conduct of my personal affairs. This is a luxury which most can ill afford in the budding stages of one’s career, and thus one is obliged to submit to the hiring mechanism to secure a foothold in the world of commerce. I am amused to hear of people who, after decades of having done one thing or another, choose to set themselves adrift in the hopes of finding a new and often unrelated business or calling. While I admire the enthusiasm, if the task involves applying for employment, I’ll give it a miss, thank-you!

Church is another hot topic in this context. Based upon what I’ve heard recently, the numbers of the congregation are dwindling steadily and maybe even exponentially. This naturally recalls that there was at one time a healthy congregation, something which is no mean observation considering the number and variety of local places of worship. Many of the older members of the community such as myself were raised in the bosom of the church. In fact as a youngster I literally attended church every day and twice on Sundays. For good or for worse, that pattern has lately been disrupted. Rather than fuel the fires of polemic, I prefer to rest my current preference upon a combination of factors which, temporarily at least, have caused me to distance myself from this particular form of association. I acknowledge that the choice is not dissimilar to throwing the baby out with the bath water, and yet the preponderance of evidence worldwide is in my opinion unfavourable. I am quick to add that my decision does not embrace anything larger than organized religion, that is, the controversy does not include the more far-reaching contemplation of the Almighty. As the world becomes smaller and smaller it is inevitable that we should bump up against the need for some comparative thinking and for the time being that has succeeded in immobilizing me in this particular sphere.

On a less heady subject, I am bound to include in my inventory of preferred abstinence no less than alcohol, dreadful subject that it is! I am the first to admit that a frozen martini was traditionally a glory not lost upon me. Now however I relegate the pleasure to youth and others more capable of withstanding the assault. Increasingly I find the visceral delectations of life are being overtaken by the cerebral, dare I say the spiritual. No doubt this development is no anomaly, but rather a mere by-product of aging generally and likely a small compliment as a consequence. Given the competing demands upon one’s strength, it is perhaps easier to face the music of another day without the contamination of the juniper berry (though admittedly its reputed remedy for rheumatism and arthritis makes the case less compelling). Nonetheless on the balance I am now prepared to look wistfully upon my hardier days of delight and cheerfully supplant them with Nature’s less provocative rewards of mind and soul.

I’m guessing that everyone knows the 1937 show tune from the Rogers and Hart musical Babes in Arms entitled “The Lady is a Tramp”, the one about the gal who “doesn’t bother with people she hates”. I don’t know about you, but I’m there! Having to put up with people whom I know will be nothing but trouble is that last thing I’m about to repeat. As unforgiving and shallow-minded as this may sound to those who cultivate a wider view of life’s oyster, I am steadfast in my opinion that there is far more to be garnered from active avoidance of controversy than the competing imperative for unrestrained inclusiveness. Granted this supreme satisfaction is not universally available, especially where one’s friction arises in the context of family. In such circumstances the best one can hope for is the foresight to rise above the perceived injury and maybe even politely excuse oneself from the arena before the fracas ensues.

I’ve heard it said that there are only four topics of conversation: sex, gossip, bodily functions and shopping. Based upon what has preceded, it appears that I have completely failed to target even one of the expressions of social exchange. I apologize for this conspicuous bankruptcy. Likewise I can see that my retraction from continued learning, alternative employment, social convention, the pleasures of the table and strict etiquette can easily be construed as little more than the slithering retirement of a curmudgeon. I prefer to speak of my withdrawal as one of rising tranquillity, not diminishing hibernation. The object is not to become either reclusive or surly, rather to afford myself the prescription for conduct that ultimately pleases. If the agenda induces me to side-step the venturesome patterns of my erstwhile youth, then so be it.

Frugality I have lately discovered is not only about penny-pinching, prudence and economy. Tragically it’s also about abstinence and self-denial. That isn’t exactly what I had bargained for months ago when I first began thinking about thrift and planning to reverse years of unrestrained profligacy. Adding this element of asceticism to the remedial project goes well beyond mere moderation in my opinion; in fact it transforms the endeavour from what I imagined to be saccharin accounting to something entirely different and personal, and not in a good way.

I have unwittingly unearthed this unforgiving truth repeatedly over the past several weeks. It now appears that I was temporarily insulated from this discovery during the first portion of the year when my disbursement was then marked by mandatory cost-cutting measures, or at least the necessity to spend what modest surplus I had on demanding things like capital renovations. It is a thankful blessing for me that abhorrence of disrepair trumps even my fiery passion for personal indulgences. Now however, with those property management responsibilities behind me, I am once again thrilling to the delight of having some loose change. Daily there are unfolding alternatives for its speedy disposition, just like the good old days! It is utterly remarkable how compelling the marketplace can be to those of us who are open to persuasion and materialism generally! The recipe for this catastrophe-in-the-making involves not only the expected prerequisites of capital and craving, but also such extraneous features as the weather and the regularity of one’s bodily functions. Combined there is a sense of unsurpassed bien être, and before long one is either caressing the latest object of admiration or typing one’s credit card number onto a now familiar web site.

But wait! It is at this critical juncture that sobering self-discipline, like a sudden wave of cold water, spills over me. Actually the awakening is far more intellectual than biological; there is an academic supremacy to this business about saving money. It really is as clinical as I had at first visualized! The higher form of analysis conveniently elbows the inferior instinctive appetites out of the way. Such blunt and superlative rhetoric as “Do I really need this?” comes to mind. Before long one is engaged in even more profound scrutiny invoking hitherto uncharted areas of examination, including for example a summary of the electronic devices one already owns or the recapitulation of the number of sweaters currently burgeoning in one’s armoire. The result is the same effect as dissecting a chocolate pie; viz., it all but kills the hunger, not to mention the enthusiasm.

While I admit that the insight is subsequent only (though happily never too late), it unceasingly astounds me how quickly one is capable of racking up a sizeable overhead on relatively unimportant items. As always it isn’t the grains of sand that matter, rather their cumulative effect, which I suppose is a distinction without a difference though the metaphor more readily affords the lesson. I am reminded of the adage, “One can’t have money and things”, a dire warning to the spendthrift!

Getting oneself into the frame of mind for stinginess requires more than a little adjustment. Overcoming a wastrel’s behaviour is I suspect akin to the alcoholic learning to avoid the drink at all costs. Like most religions, it is uncompromising. Granted the day may come when even economy can bend to the wind of excess, but there is likely as much hope of that happening as winning the lottery. Sadly frugality is a lengthy sentence. Consider, however, the alternatives; namely, being relegated to a lifetime of putting out the fires arising from burning up one’s credit card or line of credit. Eventually that motif becomes more than a bit tiresome. In the end the material world has by definition no attraction or relief. This of course begs the question whether, when all is said and done, is it better to have a fistful of the right stuff or a box with the most toys?

Here the debate becomes decidedly heady, highlighting as it does the dichotomy between the “here and now” and the “there and then”. Who hasn’t heard the arguments on one side or the other for enjoying life today or saving for the future? The question pits the extremists against one another. At times the cause is made the easier for the one by the untimely death of a comrade; at another by the prolonged misery of a destitute vagrant. No doubt there are those who would seek to straddle the boundary by advancing the theory of reasonableness in all things, as though that were somehow a popular commodity.

Having had to come down off the fence in the conduct of my own affairs, I admit there has been a goodly portion of luck at play. On the one hand I was able to indulge myself in the pleasure of my squandering, yet subsequently I was able to exchange the tokens for cash (albeit at a discount). This I interpret as fair compromise. I am keenly aware that not everyone is so privileged to be able to unload one’s misfortunes. Having been given the opportunity, I am now more than ever cautious about pressing my providence. Besides there are new openings on the horizon to which one must be sensitive in order to gain the advantage. Repeating the same blunders year after year is after all hardly advisable. And more than a bit boring.

Mr. Stanley McCubbin, aged 65 years and having a thick shock of grey hair and a ruddy complexion, lived alone with his faithful mongrel dog on a large parcel of land which had been in his family for three generations, from the time his ancestors first came to the Township of Lanark Highlands from Scotland in 1888. While both his father and his grandfather had been in military service, using the property somewhat neglectfully as a place to hang their respective hats between postings, Mr. Stanley McCubbin had opted instead to become a respectable farmer.

In spite of the extremely rocky ground upon which the homestead was built, he succeeded (with the assistance of local hired hands) in cultivating almost the entire parcel. Like most serious farmers of his time, he had also become involved in municipal politics, serving with the continuing respect of his community as both Councillor and Warden. Mr. Stanley McCubbin warranted the term “country gentleman” in every sense of the expression. In addition to being industrious and clean-living (and an active and committed Presbyterian to boot), Mr. Stanley McCubbin was a warm and kind man, who was slow to anger (though he could become recalcitrant at times, but that disposition would eventually melt, even if his opinion did not).

Like most men of his character, Mr. Stanley McCubbin was innately modest. Though he had amassed and maintained extensive land holdings, outbuildings and equipment, though he had year after year dutifully plowed his earnings into investments on the advice of his local bank managers, and watched those investments grow significantly, and never spent money either extravagantly or foolishly, Mr. Stanley McCubbin did not think of himself as a rich man, just blessed and fortunate.

Yet in spite of all these commendable attributes and personal wealth, Mr. Stanley McCubbin daily pondered his state of affairs with no small element of despondency, for you see, he had no one in particular to whom to leave his Estate. Not having married, and being an only child, Mr. Stanley McCubbin felt quite alone in the world. With so much of his time having been consumed by personal business undertakings and work on Municipal Council, Mr. Stanley McCubbin had grown old almost imperceptibly, and, more to the point, without having developed any close friendships or alliances, at least of the nature to compel him to name another as beneficiary in his last will and testament.

As Mr. Stanley McCubbin was an organized man, it was inescapable that he should eventually contemplate the terms of his last will and testament. Had he been married, there is no doubt that his wife would have prompted him to do so far sooner in life, especially if he had had children. But that natural impetus was missing in Mr. Stanley McCubbin’s solitary life. Eventually, however, he recognized that the subject was not to be ignored any longer. Once he set his mind to something, it was imperative that its purpose should be fulfilled, and sooner than later.

Accordingly, one cloudy Wednesday morning in late September, as Mr. Stanley McCubbin sat at his kitchen table after having attended to his regular morning chores, sipping his coffee and absently thumbing his investment reports, he decided to call his lawyer (Mr. Arthur Cameron) to arrange to discuss his last will and testament. Mr. Arthur Cameron, whose office was in the nearby Town of Shipman Mills some seven miles away, could see him the following day at 2:00 p.m., so advised the telephonist to whom Mr. Stanley McCubbin spoke that day.

While for many people a visit to the office of one’s solicitor is not considered anything approaching a formal occasion, for Mr. Stanley McCubbin the exact opposite was so. Mr. Stanley McCubbin had in fact planned his wardrobe for the visit from the instant he gingerly set the telephone receiver back in its cradle following his call to Mr. Arthur Cameron’s office. Make no mistake, this appointment was to be conducted with the solemnity of any other ritual ceremony, much like a wedding or a funeral. Mr. Stanley McCubbin adopted the same sense of propriety when appearing in Council Chambers; and of course it was no accident that in this persuasion his solicitor was of the same mind (and of an age, too).

On Thursday afternoon, promptly at 2:00 p.m., Mr. Stanley McCubbin (dressed in a light grey suit, sporting a blue bow tie and wearing a fedora) appeared dutifully at the office of his solicitor, and as he passed through the old oak entrance door of the historic red brick building, the chimes of the grandfather clock in the waiting room struck the hour. With equal rigour, Mr. Arthur Cameron, hearing his Client arrive, came from the sanctum sanctorum at the rear of the office to greet Mr. Stanley McCubbin. He too was suitably dressed, though he wore suspenders and a large maroon tie. The two had been friends for many years, in addition to having maintained a very satisfactory solicitor-client relationship during the same period. Much of the work which Mr. Arthur Cameron had done for Mr. Stanley McCubbin involved real estate transactions, loan agreements with the bank, and settling the estates of his departed parents. Until now, however, the subject of Mr. Stanley McCubbin’s last will and testament had never surfaced, largely because Mr. Arthur Cameron knew instinctively that reclusive and independently-minded farmers cannot be pushed.

A warm greeting and the usual pleasantries were exchanged between the gentlemen, and they then retired to the office of Mr. Arthur Cameron, where Mr. Stanley McCubbin was invited with the wave of a hand to seat himself in one of two upholstered armchairs, while Mr. Arthur Cameron assumed his traditional (and ever so slightly higher) leather swivel chair behind his desk. As Mr. Stanley McCubbin carefully placed his fedora on the chair seat next to him, Mr. Arthur Cameron eyed him attentively, sensing that what was about to transpire, while not precipitous, was something of importance to Mr. Stanley McCubbin. In the seconds that elapsed before Mr. Stanley McCubbin began to speak, the atmosphere of Mr. Arthur Cameron’s richly appointed inner office became unusually still and oddly expansive. The office housed a collection of stuff which Mr. Arthur Cameron had very deliberately and selectively collected over the past forty years.

Mr. Arthur Cameron was senior Counsel in Town where there were now six other lawyers, though all the others, with one exception, were involved strictly in the handling of family law and related matters, something from which Mr. Arthur Cameron had distanced himself many, many years before in preference for a narrow solicitor’s practice in rural conveyancing, estate settlements and corporate law. Everything about his office spoke confidence and stability, the large black safe with the florid lettering on its door (“The Goldie & McCulloch Co., Limited, Galt”), the thick and ornate Persian rugs, the handmade oak letter basket, the bank of law books (admittedly dusty) against one entire wall and the collection of brass, paintings and artifacts. The place lent itself to the discussion of one’s private affairs.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Stanley McCubbin had not come to Mr. Arthur Cameron’s office entirely unprepared. Indeed, Mr. Stanley McCubbin had spent considerable time of an evening in his tidy study at home, bathed in the cone of yellow light which poured from the ancient floor lamp beside his well-worn easy chair, debating in his own mind what he should and should not do with the disposition of his worldly wealth upon his demise. It was a trickier matter than he had first imagined. Without immediate or even distant relatives to consider, the task was made all the more demanding. His first thought had been his neighbours, who, like many people in a rural farming community, had more than once assisted the elderly bachelor, helping for example to pull his vehicle one Christmas Eve from a snowbank at the side of his long laneway, or bringing him food when he had been ill, feeding the livestock, and assisting (for reasonable compensation, naturally) with annual haying and other field operations. Yet, as much as he appreciated and valued his neighbours, he at times harboured the uneasy feeling that they were very much awaiting his passing and anticipating being remembered. This unfortunate sentiment was likely the product of nothing more than the perfectly human trait of envy of those who are well-off, and the equally understandable hope that one might be rewarded by them for previous kindnesses.

Those who are in waiting for beneficence often neglect to see the need for deeper motivation in the benefactor. As kind and generous as one might be, the rich are seldom prompted to dispose of their wealth without very compelling and often singularly selfish reason. Mr. Stanley McCubbin was no exception.

When, finally, Mr. Stanley McCubbin began to speak, his voice though strong sounded oddly remote, almost detached, and Mr. Arthur Cameron was inclined to wonder whether Mr. Stanley McCubbin was pronouncing words which he had rehearsed for presentation to a larger audience. Mr. Stanley McCubbin began his dissertation with a question, obviously rhetorical (since it was unclear to whom the question was addressed, neither did he appear to expect an answer, nor did he wait for one). His question was, “Who deserves to inherit my Estate?”. Moving along without waiting for an answer, Mr. Stanley McCubbin then engaged for the next fifteen minutes or so in what appeared to Mr. Arthur Cameron to be a denunciation of entitlement by any living person to any particle of the goods and money which Mr. Stanley McCubbin might ever own. Mr. Stanley McCubbin’s enthusiasm on the point rather shocked Mr. Arthur Cameron, who had never known Mr. Stanley McCubbin to speak out so strongly against anything, nor frankly at such length.

When at last he finished the theatrical portion of the oration, Mr. Stanley McCubbin seemed to crumple and expire into the cushion of his chair, as though relieved of a great distress, his left arm limp upon the wooden armrest, his right arm hanging inert and undignified along the other side of the chair. Mr. Arthur Cameron hardly knew what to do at this point, whether to agree with him or whether to offer any opinion whatsoever on the subject. Mr. Arthur Cameron squirmed in his leather chair uncomfortably, causing the leather to squeak and thus break the dead silence which otherwise prevailed.

As a lawyer, Mr. Arthur Cameron felt it was well beyond the scope of his professional obligation to weigh in upon the entitlement of anyone as a beneficiary, except of course within the context of lawful dependency. As has so often been observed, lawyers are mere scribes, charged to take instructions, not give them, and to ensure that those instructions are carried out within the letter of the law, perhaps with some needed cajoling along the way, but seldom to opine upon who might be a deserving recipient in the broader moral context. Indeed the matter of entitlement as anything other than the desire of the testator was really stretching the point as far as Mr. Arthur Cameron was concerned. You might as well ask Mr. Arthur Cameron who deserved to go to Heaven.

Nonetheless it was quite evident that Mr. Stanley McCubbin, though obviously driven to expound upon the subject, was in need of some support from Mr. Arthur Cameron at this juncture. It seemed that years of ignorance of the topic had caused the matter to fester rather more dramatically than was merited. Mr. Arthur Cameron, drawing at this point upon his many years of experience, knew enough to avoid dealing with the subject directly, at least as this point in time. Instead of asking Mr. Stanley McCubbin whom he might prefer to benefit, he asked him what he would like to see happen to his estate following his death.

That question gave Mr. Stanley McCubbin occasion for pause and deliberation. He had never pursued the thread of his initial thoughts about his beneficiaries beyond the point of the bequest, and now he appeared to stumble over the issue of how the proceeds of his estate were to be applied, much less by whom. Remarkably, the question posed by Mr. Arthur Cameron gave Mr. Stanley McCubbin renewed vitality and distinct interest in the debate in a far less emotional context. Mr. Stanley McCubbin actually sat straight up in his chair and fully regained his customary composure. In Mr. Stanley McCubbin’s mind, the question was no longer the finite and even vulgar matter of disbursement, but now a larger and more imposing consideration of possible perpetual advancement, however it might be accomplished.

In the hour that followed this awakening, Mr. Stanley McCubbin confided to his close professional friend, Mr. Arthur Cameron, that years of sober, restrained and dedicated hard work had in the end left Mr. Stanley McCubbin feeling either that he had accomplished nothing of true value in life or that no one was worthy of the fruits of his labour. Mr. Stanley McCubbin accepted that this was an odd paradox, but until now he had been unable to withdraw himself from the internal feud which so manifested itself only moments before. Mr. Stanley McCubbin was also clever and honest enough to understand that much of his success had come at the expense of personal happiness, that he was overwrought by the need to produce and accumulate; while at the same time begrudging the privilege of any other person to inherit the advantages without the penalties. He had unwittingly become a mean spirited and stingy old man, as unrecognizable as it may have been to any other than himself.

Knowing this, however, did not immediately open the gates of generosity. Mr. Stanley McCubbin had yet to settle upon what if anything was to be done about implementing a plan for the ultimate use of his estate after his death. The dilemma had now turned into one of stewardship, not mere entitlement. Furthermore, the uncertainty about the answer which had been raging within him for years, misguided as it was by having asked himself the wrong question, confirmed that he had been travelling down a dead end street, and that all his efforts to this point in resolving the issue had been completely wasted. He would have to start over.

At this point in their meeting, and in conclusion of it, Mr. Stanley McCubbin stood up from his chair almost abruptly. Extending his hand to Mr. Arthur Cameron, he thanked him for his time (and asked that he be billed accordingly), then took his leave without further remonstration. Mr. Stanley McCubbin had by unintended insight, got what he wanted, though of course he had yet to instruct Mr. Arthur Cameron on the terms of his last will and testament. That would have to wait for another day. Mr. Stanley McCubbin was not prepared to finalize either his will or his testament, that he knew.

On a certain level adherence to one’s instincts is almost pathological, smacking as it does of compulsive behaviour and irrationality. It’s as though instinct were a substitute for thinking, not exactly what all that education we’ve had has taught us to do. On the other hand I have yet to meet anyone who dismisses the value of acting upon one’s gut reactions even though at times the practice is elevated to the extreme of psychic analysis (“voices from the past” and that sort of thing). Barring however telepathy and clairvoyance, I have increasingly come to view intuitive behaviour as the best guide, by far more shrewd, insightful and discerning than the alternative (rational deduction).

This may at first appear to be an irresponsible vote in favour of impulse but this is to ignore the depth of the morass in which so-called natural feelings operate. Instinct is after all the instantaneous culmination of years of experience, often hard won on the battlefield not in the classroom. To suggest otherwise is the equivalent of saying that it is the key which makes a car run. Certainly a key when properly positioned sets things in motion, but it is all that other stuff behind the dashboard and under the hood which make it happen. Likewise a well-practiced intuition motivates the deeper behavioural decisions.

Let’s face it if you start by heading in the wrong direction, you’re done. That’s what instinct does – it gets you going in the right direction, even if you don’t know why at the time or even if it takes longer to prove itself correct. It is for that reason as well that one must train oneself to trust one’s instincts because often there is nothing other than that trust to sustain the validity of one’s hunch.

It is this training, this learning to accept the reliability of one’s instincts, which is the real challenge. Of course the reason it is such a challenge is because we are customarily too faint hearted to trust our instincts, and as a result we haven’t the track record to enlist in its support. Because instincts are by definition so highly personal, it is useless to attempt to marshal any sort of empirical data to support the proposition. Nobody would believe it even if there were some sort of scientific graph to illustrate the dependability of intuitive behaviour. We have to live the test ourselves. The initial impediment to doing so is the frequent lack of palpable purpose which supports our instincts. It is as though we were simply being guided by a beacon of light without knowing whence it comes. Such “reasoning” is approaching the supernatural or at the very least extrasensory acuity, a trait we sometimes mollify by calling it a “sixth sense”.

I have learned by reliance upon my instincts that not only are they to be trusted, but more importantly that they form the very foundation of not only proper but also fruitful and far-reaching decisions. I might add that part of the conundrum about trusting one’s instincts is that they often lead us in a direction which is completely opposite to which we might otherwise go. This is especially true when emotion forms a substantial element of the thinking process. Emotion is to thinking what water is to oil – they just don’t mix! Nonetheless we insist upon venting our emotions in the face of what our instincts are telling us.

One mustn’t assume that instinct operates in a vacuum, that factual detail is somehow irrelevant to spontaneous behaviour. The decision-making process, whether instinctive or rational, does not ignore the underlying science of the question. The process is about the application of the correct method of determining what to do in a situation. I believe that instinct is the natural ability to know what to do in a particular situation. Just because instinct is basic, even visceral, doesn’t mean it is to be dismissed as “animal”, meaning undeveloped. Instinct is a natural, unreasoning impulse by which we are guided to the performance of an action. It may often be an aptitude, not a mere propensity. For this reason instinctive behaviour is frequently more artistic and skilful than rationality. I think many of us could do with a bit more imagination in our daily lives. Instinct is inventive.

Young Jeremy Roswell awoke without opening his eyes and turned grudgingly in his bed. The half-defeated ringing of the dilapidated alarm clock restored him to materiality, instantly collapsing and dissipating his reverie, whatever it had been. Another day of school. He moved again, this time stretching his limbs, his upper body sympathetically twitching as he did so. The summer duvet which only weeks ago had been too warm now barely soothed him, and as he moved he felt the cool of the sheets where he hadn’t lain. It was September and autumn had already replaced the sultry days of July and August. He could sense the clammy air pouring like a stream into his stark bedroom on the second floor at the back of the house. He had forgotten to draw the drapes last night before he retired, but there was yet barely any morning light. It was six o’clock. The school bus would be at the end of the long drive to collect him at exactly 7:15 a.m. He had to get moving.

Less than a year ago the Roswells (Jeremy, his mother and father) had been prompted to move from the City to the country by the appeal of a larger residence with more land at an attractive price. They had translated their former comparatively small urban townhouse into a ranch bungalow on two and one-half acres of scrub land along a dead end concession, the third house from the end surrounded by emerald green fir trees. The place was remote even by the standards of his rural and village neighbours. Because of that distance, Jeremy was the first stop for the school bus driver on his morning route. The bus driver, a humorless middle-aged man who disliked his job, had cultivated his own routine which involved rumbling the hollow yellow chrysalis to the end of the concession, then backing it into the long drive of the house at the cul-de-sac and turning back towards the highway. Here at the side of the road he would sit in silence for several minutes with the engine turned off, awaiting the appropriate passage of time before moving forward to his first stop two hundred yards distant. Because Jeremy’s winding drive was sheltered from view by evergreens, and because Jeremy made a point of remaining hidden behind the trees at the end of his long walk from the house until the driver made his appointed arrival, the confluence of their missions was very much a synchronized affair, though ostensibly unintentional. Neither of them ever broached the possibility of deliberation on the point.

Jeremy, an only child, had been obliged to give up his City friends as an upshot of his parents’ relocation though he hardly cared. Jeremy was not a popular boy and he had never had any particularly close friends if the truth be told. Vicariously he was friends with whomever his parents knew, a casualty of being included in everything his parents did. His parents weren’t, however, part of the morning ceremony of preparing for school. In that endeavour Jeremy was on his own. Being a reserved person, Jeremy was thankful to undertake his morning disciplines without interference or contribution.

At fourteen years of age Jeremy was in many respects more mature than most of his peers, another consequence of regularly cavorting with adults. While he wouldn’t imagine himself as either especially bright or knowledgeable, he nonetheless appreciated that he had a keen sense of accountability. Jeremy generally took things seriously and eschewed what he considered wasteful frivolity. Things had to be done properly and on time. The sputtering alarm clock may as well have been a call to arms. While the moments following the last plunk of the alarm clock seemed to stretch to eternity, it was in fact a matter of seconds before Jeremy’s motivation kicked in and he was being drawn as though by a magnet from his lair. His first duty was to do his push-ups, thirty of them, non-stop. Jeremy had read about the Stoics. He relished the cool morning air which spilled upon the floor and bathed him in bracing refreshment. He knew about asceticism too.

Jeremy while not handsome was nonetheless always presentable. There was nothing either fastidious or extravagant about his appearance. Jeremy’s visual aspect spoke regulation and civility. His clothes, which he pulled from the louvered-door closet and veneered drawers, were utilitarian at best. Already at his age he had settled upon the tans and hues of the world, avoiding bright colours. When he later donned his featureless windbreaker and sensible shoes he presented the view of a young man with a plain but purposeful agenda and a hint of the arcane.

The morning breakfast table was perfunctory, everything being a nod to necessity only. There was no effusion or display of delight at the dawning of a new day; rather it was the commencement of a duty to be performed. The sterility of the family’s association was matched by the mechanism of the meal, always the same, never any sugar, and only dry toast. Even tea was off the menu. Jeremy’s parents were very strict about additives, something which didn’t figure in their fundamentalist religion. Jeremy privately counted the days when he would be free to test the waters. Meanwhile Jeremy glanced at the wall clock. It was 7:10 a.m. and time for him to walk down the lane to await the arrival of the school bus.

At the end of the lane, lined with trees, Jeremy Roswell stood erect, painted in his vanilla colours, holding his black school bag and staring directly ahead across the concession road, over the field, into the silvery cloud behind which the morning sun was rising. Momentarily he heard the sound of the school bus engine starting.