While his family and friends anxiously waited for news, tens of thousands of strangers shared his picture, provided tips to police and did what they could to help.

Sadly, it was for naught. Timothy Bosma’s remains were found today, and the police made a grim announcement that he had not only been killed, but his body, burned.

What happened to Bosma puts on display the worst of humanity, while the outpouring of grief and the number of people who took time to hang posters up near their homes, share his information on Facebook and who had talked with family and friends about him, simultaneously demonstrated humanity at it’s finest. It showed empathy, concern and caring about a fellow man.

It is shocking to think that something as simple as selling a used vehicle might mark you for murder. That someone’s life would be valued at less than a truck is frightening and cruel.

Tonight Tim’s child went to bed without a father, his wife without a husband and a community without a pillar of good. That is a pain no one, but those who are forced to experience it can know. Bosma will undoubtedly be mourned by those who knew him best, but in many ways his story and his tragedy will also mark the lives of everyone who held out hope that some way, some how this good man, who was simply trying to sell his truck, would come home again.

We can talk about the safety of buying and selling items online, but that isn’t and shouldn’t be the point of this story.

This morning I woke up just before 6am and for the first time this year I heard the songbirds singing outside my window. It was pleasant and something I didn’t miss, until I had heard it again, and could not remember the day they stopped last year.

Next week ferry service returns to the Toronto Island, which will make visiting my sailboat easier, by cutting down the 6km round trip walk to mere metres, and will likely signal it is time to spend the next couple of weekends and evenings after work getting her ready for another season.

I have no complaints about winter, but at the same time the transition from winter to spring is always my favourite time of the year.

Perhaps it is the positivity associated with renewal, of growth, warmth and light. While my record for keeping arbitrarily set New Years resolutions is spotty, each spring around this time I create an unofficial list of ‘things to do’ to appreciate the season and improve my work/life balance, which tends to tilt more and more toward work as the days get shorter and the winds colder.

This spring/summer and fall I’m resolving to bike more often, especially along Toronto’s Martin Goodman trail, which can connect my house to work and to the marina where I will keep my boat. I’m looking forward to spending more time on the water with after work sails in the harbour and weekend boating adventures. My hope is that this year, with the work I’m doing to the boat, fewer of those will be misadventures. After taking two summers without wilderness canoe trips, 2013 will be my first effort to get back into the habit of spending a week exploring one of Ontario’s provincial parks by canoe, cellphone and technology free.

Tonight, Kathleen Wynne has won and will soon become Ontario’s next Premier. Her job now is to set a course for the province that will allow her to stay. That only works if she can demonstrate to voters she intends to govern in their interest.

She is in a tough spot and may find it difficult to avoid an election at this point.

We need one soon. But until then, Kathleen Wynne does have a short period of time before an election to differentiate herself from her party’s record. If she has any hope of winning, or saving the Liberals from plummeting, she needs to prove herself and fast.

McGuinty’s nine years as Premier have left a number of communities hurting, and it is important that the next Premier, and the one after that do everything they can to learn from the mistakes and mismanagement of their predecessor.

We will see what happens in the days and weeks ahead, but with the end of the Ontario Liberal Leadership race and the election of a Premier — at least we are closer to getting bad to a normal place politically, and out of the unprecedented spot McGuinty’s resignation has left our province in.

Although 2012 was a gloomy year with all the news of economic woe, personally it has been a very positive one. On the business front, I am happy with the challenges and opportunities I get to experience each day and am constantly reminded of the value of the services I deliver by the people that I help.

In my personal life, I have been fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with my family and friends and to have even been able to take a couple of getaways from Toronto at moments I needed to rest and recharge.

Having pasted the shortest day of the year, and as we’ve missed the Mayan apocalypse, I am looking forward to 2013 with an optimistic hope for another good year.

Tonight, when I sit down for dinner with four generations of Laforet’s, I will be thankful for all 2012 has brought, and eagerly awaiting the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead in 2013.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

With support for the Ontario Liberals plummeting over the last number of months, and an emboldened opposition holding the balance of power in the legislature, McGuinty’s successor will likely fall on their budget, triggering a spring election that the Liberal Party will have an incredibly difficult time winning.

Polls show the next election will likely result in another minority government, with the PCs having a slight advantage on the seat count, but not necessarily the popular vote — adding an additional dose of volatility.

It’s anyone’s guess how this all shakes out, but it is hard to try to understand how any of this instability is good for people and businesses in our province. We effectively have a lame duck Premier for the next 85 days, who will be replaced by another lame duck Premier, who completely lacks a mandate and might last another 90 days on their own.

Ontario needs renewal and a new Premier to lead that. That said, the sooner citizens get to vote on who that Premier is, the better for everyone, because at least that will bring democracy back to decision making in our province.

I’ve been telling my girlfriend all week that I wanted to spend one last night on the boat before getting down to work, removing the sails, cleaning it up and getting it ready to be hauled out of the water. We agreed this past Friday would be the night and got on the last ferry to the island so we could stay over.

It was dark when we got there, but apparent the water level had dropped significantly since I had been there last. I slept well with the sound of rain drops hitting the fiberglass deck and the waves gentling hitting the hull, but I did notice a strange vibration coming from below me throughout the night and had no idea what it could be.

In the morning when I went up on deck to survey how wet my rigging and sails were and whether today would be the day to pack them up, a gentleman walking down the dock asked me if I was aware my boat had run aground (the water level had dropped so much my keel was stuck in the mud and technically the boat isn’t so much floating as standing on the ground).

I told him I didn’t think it had, but then got onto the dock with a six foot long boat hook and measured how far I could push it into the water before hitting the bottom — and it became clear the water in my slip had actually dropped below the 4.5 feet of depth my keel needs to not hit the ground. The vibration I felt was my keel reaching the ground and then being lifted off in the minor waves that were in the marina last night, only to hit bottom again, and rise again, before hitting bottom again, and again.

I’m very fortunate that the Toronto Island is formed from sand, having run my boat aground in the harbour on two separate sandbars on two occasions and now a third time that has more to do with water levels than my ability to pay attention to channel markers (notice to mariners: pay attention to channel markers, they aren’t kidding).

It turns out lots of folks have run aground this season and made the news for doing it (I guess I am extraordinarily fortunate, none of my meetings with the lake bottom have lasted more than 15 minutes, except the current one, which is at my dock and poses no threat to anyone or property and therefore does not warrant journalistic coverage).

August was a busy month for groundings across Ontario. On Lake Huron, a 615 foot freighter hit bottom after it missed a channel. Lake Erie saw two sailboats get grounded on a rocky bottom, one of which required a rescue after the boat capsized, and on Lake Ontario a 46 foot sailing vessel was blown into shore when it’s engine died, requiring salvaging to be freed.

I guess I’m lucky because like most sailors who have run aground, I end my season with my boat intact and undamaged. I’m looking forward to putting it away and drawing up plans for the spring to begin returning it to it’s former glory and enjoying a full season on the water, when I can sneak away from work over the weekends.

Visit Introducing Broadview Strategy Group’s ‘The Broadview Report’ to learn more about the initiative. Are there any issues you’d like to see us tackle in the coming months? Feel free to send me an email with your ideas.

It may be a topic that is mundane to some, but perhaps after reading my piece Turquoise #10 Envelopes Aren’t a Hot Item you’ll appreciate the unique marketing idea that lead to the realization that I came to that in fact turquoise #10 envelopes are extraordinarily difficult to find.

http://broadviewstrategygroup.com/blog/insights/turquoise-10-envelopes-arent-a-hot-item/

The reason it took sixteen calls to get a hotel room in Montreal last night, became apparent today after perusing the local media. Montreal’s 32nd annual pride parade and NASCAR were both big events happening this weekend.

By the time we got up, had breakfast and resolved to start the day, we had left ourselves about nine hours to take in what little part of a city you can with that little time.

We took a walk in the area around the hotel before heading downtown to the old part of the city where we spent the remainder of the day.

After wandering around on foot for a while, we decided to take a carriage ride of old Montreal and learned quite a bit along the way. We decided to walk back along some of the streets we had just visited, popping in and out of a number of art galleries and gazing at the beautiful buildings and architecture.

We missed out on a tour of the Notre-Dame Basilica, but we did get the chance to take in part of a free classical music concert at the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel. This church is more than 300 years old and proved to be a nice place to take in some history and relaxing music, while getting off of our feet for a bit.

The carriage driver had mentioned Gibby’s was an excellent place for dinner in Old Montreal and we opted to check it out for ourselves. Everything about it was excellent. The building itself is a well-kept, two hundred year old stone building oozing ambiance; the staff were great and the meal itself was prepared to a very high quality.

There were a number of nice touches that stood out including the scoop of lemon sorbet the waiter brought by between the salad and the main course, and the chocolates he brought by with the coffee and tea after the meal that are moulded with the restaurant’s logo.

I am really happy I got the opportunity to get away, even just for a day, and am leaving with two thoughts: first, I want to come back and spend more time in Montreal and second, the concept of day trips (ideally much closer to home) are a good idea that I should look into doing more often because it was a nice way to relax and recharge before the work week kicks off again tomorrow.

I will update this when I get back to Toronto to include a couple of the pictures I took today.

We were tight for time catching the train because I was busy with work into the afternoon, so we met at the train station and were heading for Montreal with bags packed but no hotel booked.

My first hotel choices were all downtown, near the old port. After the third hotel told us they had no rooms available, we began asking if someone was going on in Montreal this weekend and found out there were at least three significant events underway.

After the fifteen hotel employee told me they were sold out, after we’d entered Quebec on the train, I finally was able to get a hotel by the Université de Montréal. It was not my first choice (in fact it was my sixteenth!) but I am happy to report we found a place to spend the night and am looking forward to an enjoyable day of playing tourist before heading back to Toronto where meetings await me Monday morning.