Dan Hill

To be sure, boxing has always been, at best, a shady and sometimes cutthroat business, buttressed by hype and tomfoolery rivalling, at times, that of carnival circuses. ”

In the music world, concerts unfold strictly according to plan. But, as I'd been finding out, in the book world, things keep changing by the second. ”

Due to my work as a musician, songwriter, recording artist and author, hundreds of people stream in and out of my basement studio to help me with my creative projects. ”

Some stresses are unavoidable - it's just part of life. One of the things I do to avoid stress is not work with people that I don't really like or drive me crazy. ”

In a world where people are hungry for quick fixes and sound bites, for instant gratification, there's no patience for the long, slow rebuilding process: implementing after-school programs, hiring more community workers to act as mentors, adding more job training programs in marginalized areas. ”

While I've won five Junos, I've donated four of them to the National Archives in Ottawa. Which left my fifth Juno sitting, seemingly abandoned by its four family members, on my bookcase in my dining room. ”

All the Junos, the Grammy nominations, the gold and platinum records, did nothing to assuage my conviction that I was an out-and-out loser. ”

I was wired to be intense. I don't think that's ever going to change. ”

At 10, I heard Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man' and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond's masterpiece that my heart was smashed. ”

If we don't invest now in so-called priority neighbourhoods with music classes, athletic facilities, and skills training and mentoring, we will all pay more in the long run. ”