My son and his family have arrived for their summer visit. He has a wife, two perfect little boys and two dogs. One of the dogs is mucho Chihuahua-like (80% Chihuahua, 20% Rat Terrier, 100% insane), the other is an older, long suffering, 120 pound Coon Hound who somehow makes it through each day. ‘Hang dog‘ is the term that comes to mind. Our dogs are thrilled all to bits to have such good company as dogs and boys. We are relaxing in 84 degree (26C) temps with 200 pounds of excited dog(s) that rarely shuts up. This is summer fun sit-com style.

If we compare life forms by weight, Cheeto (2lbs) is the smallest (but the loudest and most shrill) and the two boys are next in size (small and small-medium – total weight of all three is maybe 50 pounds combined – all equally as shrill). Daisy is 75 pounds – one and half the weight of the two boys and Cheeto. And she can get worked up if all around her are losing their minds. So….she’s worked up now, too!

Our Gus is easily six to eight times our youngest grandson’s weight. Then, the heaviest by maybe a kg, comes their Hound. She (the hound) and Gus are about the same size and temperament – they are pretty chill. Then comes Sally (but only by about five or ten pounds). Any two the non-insane dogs outweigh Sal. But Sal, Thank God, is unflappable.

Fifty pounds of little boy is quite a force to be reckoned with. Irresistible force most of the time. They are curious, active, full of beans and have learned their communication skills from the hysterical little Cheeto. When the three smallest entities are in full throat, it is absolute bedlam.

My youngest grandson (three years old) has taken to oft-repeating a joke he made up…. “Grandpa! GRANDPA!! GRANDPAAAAA!!!!!”

“What?”

He grins at me. Looks me in the eye and says, “……..NOTHING!!” And then flips out howling at his own joke. The kid is a riot.

“Why don’t you and Cheeto go play in traffic for awhile?”

“But, Grandpa, there is NO traffic out here!”

“……yeah. I’ll see what I can do…….”

“Grandpa! GRANDPA!! GRANDPAAAAA!!!!!”

“What?”

“……..NOTHING!!”

….or eclectic, anyway. I generally write about whatever I am currently thinking about and, to be honest, I have not been thinking about much of anything these past few months. Nothing is really ‘grabbing’ me these days (I thought). But therein lies the lie….

There are a few things that are on my mind but they are not so much front and centre and I guess I have just kinda been ‘putting ’em out of my head’ for awhile. Busy, I guess. I think I am not thinking but, in fact, I am thinking but just not finishing any of the thoughts.

Fascinating, eh?

The biggest one, of course, is the increasing effects of aging on my and my neighbour’s health. I mean, all that growing disability is a new thing for us and we’re are all getting somewhat preoccupied with it. This has been a year of unfortunate revelation. Still, old people complaining about aches and pains is boring for everyone else so that thought rarely goes anywhere. But, for the record, Sal and I are doing basically fine except for a few new aches and pains.

However, not all my contemporaries are doing as well. Once one hits 70, things begin to wear out and, like all things working in concert with other things, one of those components inevitably goes wonky first. And, it seems, we are all wonking out a bit more these days. Hearing is a common failure. Prostates, of course. Balance. But the one that seems to be showing up for me is diminishing muscle mass. I am still very strong but I know that I am not 2/3s as strong as I was just a few years ago.

Still, none of that is news for readers. Except, perhaps, in the way it all affects those who live Off the Grid. You know…as in the title of this very blog? So here’s an example: yesterday I had to go to the neighbouring island. When I arrived at my car, the battery was dead. Because of the ‘rough’ parking area, Sal had parked the car with the front end hanging over a cliff. The front wheels were inches from going over the edge. Access to the engine bay was nearly impossible. I popped the hood from the side using a stick on the mid-point release. I removed the battery with straight extended arms (not easy) and then I went back to the boat (200 feet away at a 30 degree angle) and removed one of my boat batteries and carried it back up the hill. 60 pounds. Then, using the straight extended arm method, replaced the battery.

Difficult? Yes. Do able? Still yes. Doable in five years? Probably not.

And so that brings me to whatever little point I am trying to establish here…..not only are we getting older but I am now planning and building to accommodate that inevitable ongoing reality of diminishing ability. Part of our most used walking path is quite irregular. I built a wooden bridge over that last week to make it safer and flatter. Part of our storage space is under the various outbuildings but I only had one set of stairs to get there. Now I have three sets. The last one was finished the week before. The cable on the lower funicular is old and rusted. That chore is very hard and so it is better to replace it now (while I can) than in a few years when doing so may be too challenging. Same for the electric winch.

And all that applied to the big set of front stairs already written about.

An older friend is having similar problems and so Sal and I are building him a small highline to get groceries and such up his steep incline.

The point? Well, as we personally age and deteriorate, so do our household systems. And surprisingly, we have to actually STEP UP our pace on those systems BECAUSE our own physical systems won’t be working so well in the near future. You’d think that, as you age, you’d just do less. NOT SO! Not when living OTG. As we age, we seemingly have to do more!!

Sheesh. No wonder I am not thinking about it very much. Too much to do.

The government wants to send a social worker to our neck of the woods. And the social worker wants to come. It is now known that we have a large ‘cohort’ of old folks out here and many of them are poor or marginal in some sort of way (usually income, sometimes the little grey cells).

And, to be fair, some of them are in a bit of actual, real need.

But need is an odd word for these people. They have never been in need before and, in their own eyes, they aren’t now. Mind you, they are feeling their years quite a bit lately. So maybe a minor bit of need here and there, perhaps, on a bad day. But, by modern, whacked out urban, standards, they are wanting for everything and are now in desperate need.

Some of them aren’t even aware of their own dire situation.

And therein lies a bit of irony. Virtually no one has TV. Many do not have internet. Some do not have phone service. Many do not have good phone service. And so they do not even know how much they are lacking. Poor souls.

The social worker is jus’ gonna tell ’em, I guess.

She was going to arrive with the doctor on his monthly clinic. I always pick him up. It’s free to them. Community service. But the government would not allow her to travel the same way as the doctor. Apparently NOT safe enough. Government policy. The social worker was obliged to use a water taxi. Water taxis cost a minimum of $250.00 an hour. So her visit would cost thousands (the taxi sits and waits for her to see the poor people).

There is no public transport on the islands so the social worker would have to oblige the poor people to go to her. She’d sit in our little clinic (free to them) and do interviews, I guess. That would not help those who really are in actual need as getting into the clinic for a nice chat is way too much effort, time and gasoline.

Many would have to come by small boat. You know…? The same kind of small boat that is too dangerous for the social worker to use.

So, it is our government’s policy to pay this woman upwards of $100K a year which costs another $28K in benefits and another $75K in supervisors, rent, expenses and support staff. And her job is to help poor, old, marginal people who live a bit differently out in the remote boonies.

I spent half my working life in the helping professions and, to be blunt, they don’t work very well at the best of times and they cost too much. Even back then. But, in my time, we at least had a sense of ‘can-do’ and felt called to the mission. We earned little, worked hard and plied our trade on the ugly mean streets of Vancouver’s Downtown eastside. If you were good at your work, you were in danger at least weekly. You were also underpaid and unsupported. You did it anyway.

Not today. Now the dedicated social worker needs more structure, more rules, more regulation and can’t really do the real work that is needed WHERE it is needed.

I say all this because I wrote the supervisor who was following policy and pointed out that a good social worker needs to first establish rapport to have any kind of chance of helping people but street cred is earned by getting your hands dirty. It is a hard entry at the best of times. Showing up in a $250.00 an hour water taxi without a clue as to how to get about from that point will erode credibility and make her job harder. It is just not a good idea.

Generally speaking, I am not one to rant about the colossal waste of tax dollars so evident so much of the time. To do so is crazy-making. But this one hits close to the bone. That was my kind of work. This is my community. I still pay taxes and this is a waste of them. This is all ‘in my face’ and so I spoke up.

The supervisor thanked me for my input and is going to do it her way.

Sometimes Sal and I sit on the deck, drink wine and wonder if we didn’t get out far enough.

The challenges this day are plentiful. Lookin’ for water. We are 3/4 full on the cisterns but there is no water in the lines. The creek is low and getting lower. We SHOULD have some water, tho, but at this end, there is none coming through. Might be a broken pipe but there is very little water in the creek anyway. And we (Sally, dogs, neighbours) walked the line yesterday and found no leaks.

And this is still JUST June. We can likely stretch our storage till the end of July (maybe) but July is rarely a wet month….we may just face a water crisis by then. Imagine that? The BC WET West coast going this long without rain. And forest fires becoming all-the-rage these days doesn’t help.

And the blog? The poor bloody blog. Hardly a comment in sight, hardly a reader getting counted on the stats sheet. Mind you, WdG wrote to ask if my blog is being blocked due to the previous one posted about Russia. Untidy even had to try twice. Maybe I have raised the ire of Russian/Trump AI bots…? But, I really doubt that. A blog with seven readers is no threat to anyone save for the now Hapless Seven.

A friend/partner’s health requires a 100 foot highline installed so that is the current most-pressing chore. Of course, I am cobbling most of it from left-over materials save for the cable and winch but it is still a chore. So that is something……you know, to keep idle hands busy. My welding skills are sub-par but things stay stuck together and that is what counts.

We had a nice week-of-whales last week. Orcas by the score. The odd Humpy. Very nice.

Some other chores getting done but we are still not on-schedule. Boat still uncared for. Life just keeps getting in the way. Dog hair keeps growing, too. Naps need taking. Dinner is always a priority. Not to forget the wine! And a few too many community commitments always seem to show up in summer.

Life is a crapshoot, eh? One more urban friend has just discovered rats in their walls and roof. That makes drought and highlines seem easy. The friends are less-than-happy about the situation. “I may just have to dynamite the whole place.”

“Dave? You upset?”

Nah. This really is just life. Things happen. Rats and dog hair happen. It’s really just the way it all goes. This is what the wine is for.

Putin seen fleeing Moscow just a few hours ago. His generals either hiding, running or already captured in or near Rostov-on-Don inside Russia. All of this happening at the hands of Moscow’s own highly regarded ‘private army’, the mercenary Wagner Group. And all of this, presumably, within the last 36-48 hours.

Surprise? Not really. Moscow’s regular army was not doing well conducting their part in the Ukraine invasion and so Putin contracted Wagner’s mercenary brigade a year ago that promptly emptied jails and prisons to expand their numbers of soldiers at the front. Thousands of those convicts (some likely innocent given that they were sent there by Putin) were then deployed by Wagner on the front lines at Bakmut (Ukraine) and vast numbers were killed in that incredibly hard-fought battle. Wagner blamed Moscow for their difficulties in Bakmut and accused the generals of depriving them of support, food and bullets. Bad blood brewed amongst the Russians.

That little internal conflict began months ago. Recently a bunch of Russian missiles were dropped on a concentration of Wagner’s forces. That made matters much, much worse.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of Wagner and he got really mad at that deadly recent debacle. Oooh… and he said few days ago that he was going to turn around from fighting Ukrainians and go on a March of Justice back to find the top generals, Shoigu and Gerasimov, to give them a piece of his mind and, well, maybe chop them into smaller pieces as part of his angry expression.

That statement and subsequent 180 turnaround put Wagner fighting the Russian army. Like, yesterday! Putin called in some favours from neighbouring countries (Chechnya, Belarus, etc) asking for more fighters and, since no favours were actually owed, he got no support there. So Putin called on his existing army to stop and arrest Prigozhin as a traitor. That has not gone well, either. Thousands of Russians troops have turned their backs, a deaf ear and closed their eyes as Wagner drove by. Prigozhin is moving North out of Ukraine towards Moscow unhindered.

As it was so well put by Beau of the Fifth Column; “….a year ago, Russia had the second strongest military force in the world. Six months ago, they had the second strongest military force in Ukraine. Today, they have the second strongest military force in Russia”.

But, think about it….the last seven or so years have been history changing. The world has gone through massive upheaval. A spoiled brat, ignorant, bigot ascended the presidency of the United States and succeeded in dividing it and alienating most of the US allies. He lied, cheated, stole, grifted, groped and golfed his way through four years of incompetence at everything he touched. President Pig was and still is popular. And, in my opinion, he did a lot of that with the help of Russian money and what has come to be known as trolling-the-net. Basically, an internet-based form of the Cold War.

Trump, as the worst president in the history of the United States has, despite that, made one of the biggest impressions on the world, his own country and he almost destroyed it all. Trump made evil but still massive history. There will eventually be more words written about Trump than that of any five or more other presidents combined. Maybe Putin……

My point: evil and incompetence also makes history. Trump and Putin. Tweedle Trump and Tweedle Putin. Dumb and Dumber. These guys made an impact. A HUGE impact.

And, to be fair, I didn’t see it…….

….well, of course I SAW it. And I also kinda didn’t. I knew Putin corruptly presided over Russia. I knew Russia was trying to screw everyone over the internet trolls. Everyone saw Putin jail Navalny, throw people off balconies, Oligarchs buy yachts, Russia bully and fight with Ukraine. The world watched as dark, evil Russian influence expanded and worse, gained some semblance of acceptance.

And we all saw a lazy, corrupt, narcissist grifter in the White House for four years. We all saw lying, cheating, criminal behaviour becoming normalized. I watched the crap flow, the ugly enablers hang on. I watched them all get rich. I watched them flaunt their crimes. I watched them attack democracy. I watched their nation divide.

But, basically, I just watched the madness continue. I did not foresee the end game. To be fair, I was openly hoping the whole time for a comeuppance, a reckoning, a final and just outcome. Just one small victory for good over evil would help. But I was not holding my breath. I just saw no light at the end of the tunnel. De Santis went after Disney. George Santos won a seat in the house. Harlon Crowe and Clarence Thomas slid out from under a rock along with Alito and other Supreme Court Justices. Fox News got richer. Turkey’s Erdogan shone. The House of Saudi did business with Jared Kushner. Xi rattled swords over the South China Sea and Taiwan. It all just seemed as if the world was getting darker.

And then…..and then…..well……I still don’t know……but Jack Smith and the DOJ give me hope. Putin fleeing Moscow gives me hope. China will likely tone it down a bit as Russia implodes. NATO might breathe a bit easier….so might Ukraine. The mini-tyrants will shut up for awhile. I think Trump will go to jail or die soon……DeSantis is done. So is Santos. So may be the current GOP. Crooks will go to jail.

I dunno….the last seven or so years was more than just interesting times…don’t you think?

And, well, the surprises just keep coming…

Late this afternoon, Wagner stopped their march on Moscow (125 miles from the city) and turned for the more ‘neutral’ Belarus. The president of Belarus (Lukashenko), acting as a mediator, brokered a deal wherein Wagner gets away free, no charges will be brought to Prigozhin or his forces by Putin. And, well, peace reigns once again….or peace between the Russians, anyway. I suppose Putin will continue to prosecute the war on Ukraine but, well, Putin was starting to lose that war when he HAD Wagner. Now he does not have Wagner. Maybe Putin does a re-think?

Ukraine’s Zelensky, on the other hand, is a tad disappointed in this new twist. “What, Yevgeny?! You get to within the Moscow city limits and you quit?”

Smarter strategists than me opine that Wagner, for all their fighting superiority compared to the regular Russian army, simply do not have the numbers to take on Russia. They are far too outnumbered. So, citing the desire not to slaughter fellow Russians (or be slaughtered by fellow Russians) Wagner took the face-saving route west to Belarus.

What do I think? No idea….Fred K thinks Putin still controls Russia and it is hard to ignore the reality of that…but, gee, can any leader (ruthless or otherwise) not see the writing on the wall? There is a significant disgruntlement amongst Russians. Their neighbours are not happy. Their economy is struggling (less than it should) and they have lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a globally condemned war with Ukraine….not to mention starting to actually LOSE that war with Ukraine. Now they have significant if not crippling division within their ranks. Russia does NOT look like a winner.

Speaking of which, Fred also suggested that Trump ain’t done. And, again, I can see why that is still a fair observation….but, but, but….I think Jack Smith and the DOJ are gonna drop another indictment soon. This one will be bigger. This one has the ‘fake electors’ scheme. Fanni Willis (Georgia) will indict and E. Jean Carroll will continue to whack away at his dwindling fortune with lawsuit #2 – should get huge damages. His cronies are going down. Hard. Methinks some in his family may face charges, too.

I dunno, I am no seer. I see fog looking at Putin but I see conviction when looking at Trump.

Seven years of ‘interesting times’ looks like only 70% of what is to come.

Sal and I have to get in the winter’s firewood right now and that means (as it does every year) hunting, catching, corralling, sorting, hauling, cutting, splitting and stacking wood. And it is all OK. It’s good exercise. But every year it becomes a bit more of a chore. That’s kinda what aging means, really….what you used to do easily now takes more effort.

This year we are even older and so the challenge is a bit more daunting but the task is made much harder by NOT finding all the bloody logs we need! We need maybe ten more. There is simply much less floating around this year. In other words; more time needed for more log hunting. We may just get in 3/4 of a woodshed this year and that is the usual amount we burn. Every year prior, we had some of last year’s wood left over – kinda helps kick-start the next season. This year we may not. This year we may burn all we can get and this year we may not get enough.

Oh, well.

We are also about one month behind schedule on all sorts of things. I need to build a ‘warm room’ under the house so that I can re-plumb everything in such a manner as to keep it from freezing. Freezing was not an issue for the first twelve or so years – maybe one or two days of pipe-bursting weather – but we just closed and drained the system and opened it all back up a day or so later. But the last few years have had some longer lasting cold snaps and, well, I do not want to do the water-totes-from-the-cistern routine any more. Easier to build a warm room. Hauling two 50 pound totes at 80 may be a bit more difficult than it is currently.

The great stair-climb that is our front entrance (88 steps from low water to the second floor) needed replacing and two thirds of that is done. The last third has been put on hold. Too much else to do right now. And the bottom ten or twelve sea-stairs may just have to be relegated to history. The sea has reclaimed large portions of them.

All the fire fighting equipment needs servicing and replacement. That’s a big job.

Let’s not talk about the garden. Nor shall we get onto the topic of the boat. Still so many little things to do.

I just built a little back deck and now have to put the stairs on it….

….but we paused after a few hours of building-on-a-45-degree-rock-struggle because the dogs needed clipping. Two hours later we were about one half way through – half a dog each. They seem to have ADHC (attention deficit hair clipping)! They both look a bit lopsided right now but they are not show dogs. They wanna quit about the same time I do so we have a deal.

We intended on running a second water line down the creek this year. If one line plugs up (and it always does), we could just switch over. And, anyway, the current one is getting on in years. It could use a little help (yes, I am projecting). A second line is overdue. But, well, running a second line is a big project and, well, there is enough to do within twenty feet of the house still….I’ll eventually get to it.

Plus a million other little chores that seem to take a great deal more time than ever before. And time is no longer our long suit. And that is what I mean by the real challenge has just begun. We really need to time-manage a lot better.

Sheesh.

“Dave! I thought you got Woofers in to help?”

Yes and No…mostly no….we mostly got woofers in to give them a taste of OTG, to pay back for the kindness we received when we traveled. We got in W’fers for them. They helped out, tho. Some were fabulous. Most W’fers tried hard and did what they did but the balance of our work in getting them, housing them, supervising their work, keeping them safe, entertaining them and feeding them for maybe half a week’s work was not in our favour. We still enjoyed it but that is a chore that now falls under time management. It is quicker, cheaper and easier to do it ourselves. And we are getting slower.

Epilogue: all logs that we had collected in the lagoon are now up the hill. We hauled up the remainder (8) this morning. Also the hardest part of the new stairs is done. Just putting treads and handrails on tomorrow or the next day. Except for this mornings whinging blog, it was a productive day.

This is my last of the Alternative Dispute Resolution series. There are more stories, of course, but it is not generating much in the way of commentary and so I will take that as a polite and subtle suggestion to move on…..

But I love this one: The government wanted to hire some more mediators. They wanted women. And so they got some. I was assigned to ‘mentor’ and train them in the ways of government mediations and so I did. They were already bona fide mediators but, well, the government has its ways of interfering in a pure mediation process and those subtleties needed learning.

I’ll call her Maggie. Nice woman. Smart. Trained as a lawyer and, perhaps a bit reliant on that, but otherwise fine. She was a personal political appointee of the Attorney General and had access whenever she wanted it. Her first case was in the Interior. Six men. Three on one side, three on the other. We entered the allotted mediation room and I suggested that we ask for a bigger room. She said this room was fine. She was in charge.

The first three guys came in on time and sat at the other side of the table. A few minutes later, the other three came in and sat facing them. All six guys were dressed almost identically. Mostly white or plain colour shirts, jeans, heavy shoes. Nobody wore glasses. Every guy was well over two hundred pounds. All were in their early to late forties. Nobody greeted one another. I sat in the corner. Observing. Maggie came in.

The room was now (with 8 of us in it) a very small boardroom. No windows. Roughly 14 x 18. Size of a large bedroom. One door only. Maggie weighed in at around 140, maybe a smidge more. Loose black dress. She was a bit on the ordinary side but not off-putting. Hair was short, dull. No jewelry. Not inclined to smile. Maggie had a lot going for her but she’d struggle as even a Walmart greeter. Her ‘grand entry’ went virtually unnoticed.

A mediator does not have to be a spokesmodel or even good looking. I was proof of that. But they had to have a sense of the room. They had to feel the dynamics at the very outset. They needed to establish a mood, a focus, a curiosity for the participants at the very least so that they would all listen. Maggie went straight to her briefcase and stayed there a bit too long.

“Goooooood morning, gentlemen. My name is Maggie Smith, I am a lawyer with the Ministry of the Attorney General. I hope you all had a nice drive in. The weather is beautiful today and very sunny. I love that about the Interior, don’t you?”

The room immediately felt even more claustrophobic. That effort at establishing any kind of mood or relatable vibe fell totally flat. It was awkward.

Because of that, Maggie immediately got tense. You could tell by her posture, and her eyes but mostly because of what she next said and how she said it. Her voice had gone up a pitch. Maybe two. And it was just a little hesitant. The scowls on the men’s faces didn’t help. They had yet to even acknowledge her presence.

“How can I help you?”

That was a huge mistake. It was an invitation for everyone to talk and it did not give any structure or direction to the moment which was clearly what was needed. The guys started in at each other.

Maggie tried to get control back but their voices drowned hers out and what voice she had was fading and breaking into fragments. She even backed somewhat away from the head of the table. The guys took that to mean, they should just argue. Their voices grew in number and in volume.

When one of them stood up and leaned across the table with his hands on the table (HUGE SILVERBACK GORILLA MESSAGE) Maggie had practically climbed back into her briefcase (colourful hyperbole but it seemed that way to me).

I jumped up and spoke with as loud and deep a voice as I could.

Desperate. The guy was freaking. “You have to do this separation now! I am losing a fortune every day!” The couple were worth $8M when $8M was real money.

He was a stock promoter, hustler, trader. He lost and won thousands every day. But he won a lot more than he lost….that is, until the separation was sprung on her. The day he said he wanted out, she had her lawyer freeze all the accounts. Guy couldn’t work. Shell company garbage stocks were frozen. Good stocks were frozen. Bank accounts frozen. His credit card was frozen. He was frozen.

She, on the other hand, was hot. Bitter, mean, bullying-as-a-cop but hot. When she came into my office, I saw the real life equivalent of Jessica Rabbit. Her figure was straight out of the centrefold of a Playboy (or so I am told). Her face was sexy-pouty gorgeous but only lightly made-up. Beautiful hair all over the place. She had as much body exposed as one could legally get away with and what was clad was spray-painted on. She was really hot and she knew it.

Seems the accounts being frozen was not the coldest part of the stand-off. She would only lift the freeze if he gave in to her demands (he had a court date to implore a judge that the freeze was a mistake given his profession but it was some time off). The coldest part was that she wanted it all.

BC Family/Canada Law (maybe not Quebec) has no fault divorce. No fault divorce means many things but the one that seems the most important to disputants is that the family estate gets divided equally. Equal never really happens for a variety of reasons (children, employment, etc) but splitting things equally and practically is the concept.

Equally is a word that best lies in the eyes of the dividers. If two parties agree to an unequal division by straight math, but they swear in the separation agreement that the deal ACTUALLY IS equal due to other factors, the courts/Registry will accept the parties definition of ‘equal’ and register the agreement. If they say it is equal, then it is equal.

Quick digression: If she has a pie and he has a cake then each taking theirs could be considered equal. But so would he and her taking half the pie and half the cake each. So would he and her taking a slice of pie and giving up a slice of cake. And, not finally, so would it be equal if they mashed the two together and split the pile of pie-cake. Equal can take many forms.

Once you accept that equal can take many forms, then the definition of equal is left almost entirely to the parties. ‘IF’ they agree. ‘IF’ is what mediation is all about.

“I want it all. I want the accounts, I want the money and I want the house, boat and Whistler chalet. He can go make more money. I cannot. I have no skills, no education, no work history. I need it all.”

“No skills whatsoever? No education at all? Nothing? What have you done for the last 15 years (she looked to be in her mid thirties).”

“What do you think? I whored! I got here on my back. Plain and simple. And now I am getting older. This (she gestured sweeping her hand down her body) is not going to play much longer. I’ve maybe got four years tops to get what I want if I am lucky. You want proof? He wants out. He WANTS OUT. That’s where I am at – HE WANTS OUT!!!”

I could see why he felt desperate. (I kinda wanted out myself). He wanted to leave the marriage and that is reason enough in Family Law. And there were no kids on which some kind of continuing relationship may have been possible. She basically chained him to the marriage by freezing all their assets. And the price of freedom was going to be high.

I asked him to leave her with me for a bit….he was happy to do so. And we chatted. After awhile I learned that he had not made the whole of the $8M estate himself. It seems that between Pilates, yoga, Starbucks and lunching out with her girlfriends, she occasionally looked for run down expensive properties. Shaughnessy and the British Properties were her hunting grounds. She aspired to better neighbourhoods.

Of course she used her husband’s money to buy the house and to then renovate it. The couple would then move in for a couple of years until she wanted to move up in the world and so off she’d go again. They had the Whistler property and the Huge British Properties house by her ‘trading up’ and overseeing the remodeling. Each ‘trade up’ was profitable. I explained that her history proved that she was more than just a pretty face, she was an astute buyer, a renovator, a decorator, a real estate whiz and a money-making seller. She had a very lucrative profession.

Everything about her demeanor changed. She hadn’t seen her work in that light. She thought of it before as simply being a good housekeeper. Her face changed. Her voice changed. It was like a different (but still scary-sexy) person in the room. Her mind started going to houses that she had recently seen, the cost of the purchase (all numbers done rapidly in her head) and the cost of renovations. She was already running down the road.

“But I need his money to do that!”

“True. But you are entitled to half already. Four million dollars is more than enough to get started. Make a deal. Get your share of the money and go to work. In this market you may do better than he does and you only have to do one a year…maybe two…CRA considers one a year to be a profession and then you are taxed. But, if you do it every two years and each house is renovated, it is a principle residence and you are not taxed.”

After about an hour of exploring the issue a few more times, she asked me to call her husband back in. A half hour later, they had the deal. But they also had no trust. Who would? So two hours or so later, I had written the agreement up in the proper format and they headed off to find a notary to witness it.

That agreement was a Jessica Rabbit pulled out of the hat!

I had a case referred to me by a different law firm (than the one I previously mentioned). Four elderly Chinese businessmen were in a dispute. One pair were the landlords, the other pair were the tenants. After renting to those tenants for almost forty years, the building was pretty rundown and needed not only refurbishment but even some structural repairs. It had also recently suffered a kitchen fire from one tenant and that had precipitated the issues in dispute. The dispute was over who should pay for what.

“They came in because we had once represented the landlords and they wanted to hire our judge for a few hours. We explained that we do not have our own judges. They insisted. We could not even offer to arbitrate because we had already acted for one of the parties in the past. Plus, their English is really broken and we all had a hard time at first understanding what was the problem. We decided to pass the ball to you.”

“Thanks. But why me? I do not speak Chinese (Cantonese) either.”

Forgive me this brief explanation of the industry from which stories arise. Not everyone knows the difference between the three main dispute resolution processes. Without that knowledge, any soon-to-come anecdotes will just seem weird.

Arbitration is (usually) pretty black and white, fact-based, personal, it can be custom tailored somewhat, fast, cheap and enforceable by way of a court order*. Arbitration is conducted like a judge in a mini-courtroom (a boardroom) employing a series of simple rules around evidence and process, some of which can be determined by the plaintiffs. Lawyers are optional, not required.

*The courts recognize the role of arbitration and will enforce an award almost by rubber-stamp (if the arbitrator went off the sanity rails, or had a hidden agenda later found out, then the arbitrator can overruled – rarely happens). The court judge does not look at the case or the judgment, they just enforce the award (if process was complied with) by ‘order of the court’. Awards cannot be appealed. In other words: arbitrators are regarded by court judges as peer-judges.

The advantages of arbitration over court are, of course, huge. The main reason is that arbitration was designed to resolve disputes quickly, cheaply and in private. Very often in contract disputes, time is of the essence and litigation (with lawyers) takes a lot of time and money.

But court proceedings were never intended to be human-scale resolution pathways. They were intended to build the body of common law, to set precedent, to act as a guide for all society to know what will likely happen if a dispute goes to court. Court is to build a library. The people in the case are not important. Time is not important. Families and businesses are not important. What is important is building the body of case law so that, in future, lawyers can better advise their clients. In litigation, plaintiffs who actually go to court are literally sacrifices for the common law.

So, think of litigation as cumbersome, costly, complicated and controlled by lawyers and judges (all for benefit of the system at your expense). Arbitration is personal, adjustable, flexible, fast, inexpensive and does not require lawyers. Plus the disputants get to mutually choose their own private judge. Litigants, unfortunately, get whoever the system offers.

To the disputants the results will be the same. They will get a decision on a dispute.

Mediation is a different animal altogether. Mediation is not black and white. It is fifty shades of grey. It is compromise, agreement, negotiation, communication and not just a little psychology. Mediation is, essentially, reforming or rebuilding on a previously well-regarded relationship – at least long enough to get a deal.

Husbands and wives who hate each other today with a passion usually still have some common relationship threads from their happier past on which to build a compromise, a settlement, or even a different relationship. The mediator is less like a judge and more like a referee controlling the negotiations so that poison words, history, anger and other sabotaging feelings do not get in the way of a managed, focused and directed negotiation.

Arbitration is a dispute resolution analysis of facts, measures, law, rules, and often, money. Mediation is a resolution approach utilizing recipes for communication, understanding and agreement.

Litigation just plain sucks for the individuals getting ground up in the system.

Anyone going to court nowadays is a fool. Courtroom is now reserved for corporations. Try mediation first. Then go to Med-arb. That means arbitration is the final step.

As you can well imagine, the ideal arbitrator is a cut and dried, black and white, no-nonsense, clear thinker who is likely more than passing familiar in a few trades, professions or is at least highly ethical, neutral and rules based. This person knows right from wrong. Trump’s Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, although a lawyer/judge, actually really looks the part.

You can also imagine the mediator as a bit of a laid-back hippy-type preaching love and understanding. This person gets along with everyone, hears well, listens well, builds rapport, says soft wisdoms and has the presence to pull all that off in a hostile environment for at least 90 minutes at a time. That is not easy. Trust me. Many not-too-good mediators with only those traits are just run over by angry participants. And strong, take-charge types find their ego can become obstacles to rapport-building and generating the necessary give-and-take dialogue.

There is a very narrow skills balance point in mediation. A good mediator controls, manages and directs the conversation but does so in a way that the parties feel like they are doing all the work. Most mediations take at least a few 90 minute sessions. Most lawyer-mediators take double that number of sessions – seemingly forever. Expensive. Lawyers were trained to be litigants but ‘adjusted’ to mediation. Some are very good but most are not. I did over 300 and only once required 4 sessions. A bit of fast-math-in-my-head, humour and a dish of candies seems to help move things along.

Women tend to becoming mediators and men tend to become arbitrators. The professions are not gender specified, of course, but many of the more commonly arbitrated disputes are in the commercial, construction and manufacturing industries and a lot of personal, neighbourhood, strata and family disputes involve women.

That historic tendency is less so today but, in a way, it is still somewhat stereotypical. More male arbs in construction, more female mediators in family law. Women tend to look for consensus, cooperation and collaboration. Men tend towards determining right and wrong, hierarchy and confrontation.

Oh yeah, and there is a bit of other sexism, too. And it worked to my advantage. Men often feel that woman are all in some sort of ‘sisterhood’ cahoots and don’t trust a female mediator as readily in a divorce. Women are way less judgmental and will easily trust either gender. Jus’ sayin’….

For a few years I was on the accreditation board for mediators. The women, generally, were more skilled at discussion and building consensus, the men were better at leading, directing and controlling the conversation. Both styles can work if done well.

The best natural mediator I ever saw was a beautiful, very young, blond woman in her lower-to-mid-twenties. When she entered the classroom, for a real case-based test, I really did not think she had a chance. Too pretty. Too young. Most disputants want to see a bit of grey hair on the referee or judge. In age we trust, it seems. Trusting a younger person when you are older is hard. But she was a natural. She had everyone (all in the room at least 15 years older) onside and eating out of her hand in record time – including the accreditors (two men, two women)! And yet, when it was over, her actual people-management skills were so gentle and subtle as to be practically invisible.

The best professional mediator I ever saw was a very handsome, extremely well-dressed, perfectly coiffed and eloquent man who also seemed to project no ego whatsoever (how did he do that?) and took charge so effortlessly that it all came together like magic. Mediation is truly a skill, an art and an example of in-the-moment practical psychology.

Me? Well, I think I was a very humanistic arbitrator and a bit of a hard-cheese mediator. The worst traits of both fields. I was adequate at both but would never be number one in either. My main asset was that I was very quick, very inexpensive and always did plenty of follow-up. I cared for the clients and cared that the agreement worked out.

More than once I was called on a Saturday and did the first meeting (two separate coffee shop get-acquainted meetings with the clients) the next day, the first session on Monday, the second on Wednesday, the wrap-up on Friday and the first draft of a ten page agreement on the following day. Those kinds of ‘quickies’ were mostly because there was a court-date looming. I even had a number of clients come back three or more times. One woman came back for a second divorce and called a few years later for a third (I said ‘no‘. I was now biased towards her because of her track record).

More than a few friendships, with people who were initially were strangers, came about as a result of me doing their mediation. That was a major bonus in my life. There is a saying: “If you take on a case with any kind of bias or prejudgment, you are not fit to practice. If you leave a case after all the deliberations, evidence and discussions, without judgment and bias, you did not do your job.” I came away liking some clients.