Johnnie hadn't minded playing toy theatre with them but wasn't going to play with girls outside, so he went and sat beside Grandad who said it was about time they had a man-to-man talk. That's when he said the thing about him and Tommy being his most important grandchildren because they would be the ones to carry the Kentson name on to the next generation of lightermen. Something told Johnnie that it was not the right time to say that he wanted to be a soldier in the cavalry when he grew up... Early death. Bereavement. Single parenthood. Children. Life. The parallels between her twenty-first...

Set in the Toronto area, this is the story of a woman whose life, together with the lives of her three children, becomes closely tied to the fortunes of a medical devices manufacturing company, McGrath-LaPlante, which is fifty per cent owned by the family of her late husband. In the early 1980s, her teenage children inherit their grandmother's shares in the company and Marilyn, herself, is parachuted into a management position with a seat on the board to protect her children's interests until they fulfil the will's requirements for their education and take ownership of their shares. The...

This book began as a therapeutic exercise for a mother who had recently lost her agoraphobic daughter to suicide. Years later, a visitor to her anxiety disorder information website asked her for material that would help in explaining his daughter's school phobia to her teacher. It was still happening... here was a child who was experiencing the same lack of understanding that had virtually crippled her own child's education in the nineteen eighties. Her father was searching the internet for help. Parents were still having to educate the very people who should have been among the first to...