Chapter 1

As I looked up at the darkening sky, I was glad that my supply boat had been here yesterday and left me what I needed for the next few weeks as well as a load of staples for the next few months. With winter coming on, it often might be a problem for anyone to reach me except by helicopter and even that might be pretty dicey.

Oh hi. I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Wallace Brinkley – Wally to my friends, what few that I’ve still got and ‘here’ is a remote island in the Haida Gwaii group of islands off the northwest coast of British Columbia. I guess you’re wondering how a guy like myself wound up way out here - well that’s a long story.

I guess it really starts almost 30 years ago when I started building my dream business. What the business was doesn’t really matter but what I did or didn’t do, does – I became so focused in building up the business that I lost sight of everything else and eventually lost everything that really mattered – my wife and kids, my friends and eventually myself.

I’d graduated from college with a business degree and saw a business opportunity that wasn’t being met. I felt I had just the idea that would fill that need. As I started building my business, things were slow at first but the word started getting around and I soon had almost more customers than I could handle. As this was going on, I started being noticed by the local business association and found I was being viewed as an up-and-coming young business leader. One day at an association meeting, I met a young woman who seemed to be as attracted to me as I was to her. It wasn’t long before Mary and I were dating, then marrying and eventually starting a family. I had everything I wanted – I’d become successful, had a beautiful, caring wife and two bright young sons.

It seems we all have 20-20 hindsight and, as has so often happened with others, I didn’t see what was happening around me. I was working long hours building up my already successful business into an even larger and more successful business, often ignoring my family. I didn’t notice what was happening when my wife told me she was leaving, was going to take the boys with her and would be asking for a divorce. In fact at one point I vaguely remember thinking ‘that’s one less thing I have to worry about’. I didn’t notice when fewer and fewer friends called and asked to get together. I didn’t even notice when I stopped getting calls from my friends all together.

It wasn’t until I overheard part of a conversation between two other businessmen that things finally sunk it. One of the men commented that it was too bad that, while I had a good business, I seemed to have lost everything else that mattered. When I heard it, I was resentful and almost said something to them but just as I was about to open my mouth something made me stop and take stock of myself and my situation. ‘Is this true?’ I asked myself and then realized that it just might be.

That night, after eating supper by myself (again) in a local restaurant and going back to my fancy condo which was empty except for the furniture, I came to the realization that the comments I’d overheard were correct. I realized that I hadn’t responded to a bunch of letters from my ex-wife. In fact I hadn’t even opened many of them. I gathered them up and getting them in date order, I started to reread the ones I’d previously opened then opened and read the rest. I was horrified to see that I’d missed both of my sons’ high school graduation ceremonies and unless I flew out tonight, I’d miss my oldest son’s graduation from university.