My formative years were spent in a very small, rural, Canadian community. A hamlet, by definition. Needless to say, it was not a racially diverse environment. I arrived in Montreal, not long before Anthony Griffin, a 19-year-old unarmed black man, was shot and killed by a Montreal police officer on November 11, 1987. He was the same age as I, and y...

At present, international insurers and the Lloyd's market are working very hard to look rather busy issuing general statements and advisories that detail how they are "assembling teams" and "closely monitoring guidance" and "tracking" the contagion's progress, while promising to "assess all claims in accordance …facts …policy wordings" etc., and co...

I have birthdays on the brain. Everywhere I look I see cakes and balloons and pointy hats. For starters, as a father of three, it seems each weekend sees me lurching desperately from one Kidnagymnafunzooazium to the next, toting gift bags with billowing pastel tissue paper. Indeed, for the past few years, Classmate Birthday Gifts is an established ...

The Power of Challenge. This was the theme at 2017 EuRA International Relocation Congress in Warsaw, Poland. Prior to the event I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. Perhaps it was just another empty buzz phrase, a flavour-of-the-week tagline that would do the trick in a pinch as well as any other. Coming out the other end, I know Warsaw to be a...

The New Year's spirit. Resolutions. New Beginnings. The dawning of a New Year provokes a stirring within many among us to pause, if only briefly, to take stock of one's lot in life; to look back and draw lessons from the road traveled and gaze hopefully upon the journey ahead. Inarguably, an occasion perhaps best contemplated in the context of soli...

​F​rom the outset, for better or worse, our company has made a conscious decision to push all of our strategic chips to the centre of the table and immerse ourselves in the ultra niche global mobility and relocation marketplace. Which means at any industry gathering we are the outsiders who have unilaterally decided to set up camp in a village occu...

A full moon ascended over the Crescent City as delegates descended upon New Orleans this week for the Vacation Rental Managers Association Annual Conference. Risk couldn't have been too far from anyone's mind as we made landfall at about the same time as the remnants of Hurricane Patricia, once a monster out-sizing Katrina that had degenerated into...

The other day I was in an elevator and in my peripheral vision noticed an older, grey haired gentlemen standing next to me who, it appeared, was discreetly checking me out from the corner of his eye. Now, to be honest at this stage of the game I'll take flattery and attention from wherever it comes however it was all a bit awkward until I realized ...

Sometime in the mid 1500's Holy Roman Emperor Charles V famously wrote: "To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse - German." Now, I live in a bilingual city, more or less stumble through both primary languages, and after years of business travel have somehow miraculously absorbed enough linguistic tidbits here and th...

To my great amusement and wonder, there are two hundred and one Art Vandelays on LinkedIn; evidence, if anything, of the fact that there are others out there who might from time to time pursue a whimsical and mischievous outlet for their attention deficit issues. Apparently, I am not alone. Many cite Vandelay Industries as their current employer, a...

It's winter conference season 2015.  Which means that I have spent a good part of the past few weeks actively boring rooms full of people to within an inch of their lives as I indulgently wax poetic on the merits of conscientious risk management, blithely oblivious to the pain and suffering of my audience like some sort of sadistic and twisted...

Back in medieval times, Alain de Lille was a bit of a player who play-play-played, and folks apparently re-Tweeted his Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam, ("A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome") like, a gazillion times and I think that's how Lollapalooza started, but don't quote me on that. I may need to double-check some facts. At a...

 Αnnual home leave is a time to catch upwith family and friends, to share experiences from faraway lands and to load up on the your favorite breakfast cereal and candy bars that you can't get in the host country. Often, the mindset of global mobility administrators and service providers is so focused on what not leave home without, that what t...

Humour me for just a minute…Can I get a quick show of hands?  Who among you has a stamp or coin collection? Not so many. Thought so.  One more question: For those of you that do, how many of you would take these precious anthologies with you on a cross-border assignment lasting probably not more than two years? Exactly as I suspected. Sta...

 There is mass confusion in the relocation and international mobility marketplace on the subject of automobile insurance. Much of it is the result of financial illiteracy, some is attributable to a complex and archaic insurance system, and a lot just comes down to the misalignment between domestic supply and international demand. Typically, in...

 The Basics Professional Liability insurance, also known as Professional Indemnity insurance, is designed to provide coverage for damages awarded as a result of the policyholder's liability, arising out of a claim for an error, omission, or negligence in the performance of services under contract and/or the delivery of professional, 'expert' a...