You may think this is weird, but I’m not a hockey fanatic, even though I’m Canadian.

It’s my Dutch blood that made me a soccer fan of the English Premier League and the Champions League. I also became a basketball fan when the rivalry between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird heated up, not to mention the arrival of the GOAT, Michael Jordan. And, then there was Anderson Silva and Chuck Liddell. I got hooked on Mixed Martial Arts.

But hockey?

I only watched hockey occasionally during the playoffs. But, even as a casual hockey fan, I knew who Gordie Howe was.

Nicknamed ‘Mr. Hockey’, and born in Saskatchewan in 1928, Gordie Howe was known for his scoring ability combined with strength and physical toughness. His style of play popularized the term ‘Gordie Howe hat trick’, a goal, an assist and a fight in a single game.

Despite being Canadian, Gordie Howe didn’t play professionally for the Montreal Canadiens or the Toronto Maple Leafs. Rather, he played for the Detroit Red Wings, another one of the NHL’s Original Six teams.

The city of Detroit is across the river from Windsor, Ontario.

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Gordie Howe played for the Red Wings for 25 seasons. He won four Stanley Cups with the team (1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955), and won both the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player and the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s scoring leader six times.

Gordie Howe was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972 and died in 2016.

While the trophies and awards certainly tell us about Gordie Howe’s abilities, Gordie Howe’s career length and dedication tells us another story.

Relationships and reputations are built.

They’re built on showing up, working consistently, and becoming someone people can rely on. There’s a different satisfaction in helping build something, than there is in jumping on board something that’s already a success.

It means becoming part of the foundation.

It means becoming a bridge.

More than six decades after Gordie Howe first wore the Red Wings’ logo of winged-wheel, his name now lives on a physical bridge that connects the two countries that defined his life.

After nearly eight years of construction, the Gordie Howe International Bridge opened to traffic on July 27, 2026. The 1.5-mile bridge spans the Detroit River, connecting Michigan’s Interstate 75 directly with Ontario’s Highway 401. Nearly 8,000 crossings were reported on the opening day of the bridge.

The two towers stand at around 722 feet above the ground. The bridge’s towers have a hockey stick-shaped design, inspired by the curve of the top of a slap shot. It’s an appropriate tribute to a Canadian who spent the majority of his career skating down American ice rinks with a hockey stick in his hand after a loose puck.

The bridge is also an important economic connector.

The Windsor–Detroit corridor accounts for about 30 per cent of Canada–U.S. trade moved by truck, making it the most important commercial land link between the two countries.

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Bridges are a lot like relationships in business.

Building one means creating a connection.

It means developing trust, communication, empathy, and finding common ground.

And like a reputation, a bridge is a long-term commitment.

It takes time to build one, but can be taken down incredibly quickly. One dishonest, disrespectful, or impulsive decision can undo years of goodwill. Burning a bridge also means closing off future opportunities. Former co-workers, clients, and even competitors may cross paths again someday as partners, references, employers, or as unexpected opportunities.

That being said, building a bridge doesn’t mean both parties have to see eye to eye on everything. It means they can disagree without being disagreeable. The goal is to keep an outlet for discussion and cooperation open between people with different interests, opinions, and ideologies.

An important part of building a bridge is maintenance.

When communication breaks, appreciation is taken for granted, and commitments are forgotten, the bridge starts to come down. That doesn’t mean conflict itself is a bad thing. When handled appropriately and respectfully, conflict can reinforce the bonds that keep a relationship intact.

Trust is the foundation.

Communication is the system of suspension cables.

Reciprocity is the fuel that keeps the traffic moving.

And the best bridges have traffic moving in both directions.

The question is this: Will my actions contribute to a cooperative, positive outcome, or will they become another barrier to communication and solutions?

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The opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge certainly raised that question.

The bridge is a binational project jointly developed and owned by Canada and Michigan. Canada is responsible for funding the bridge’s construction. The bridge’s operation involves co-ordination between Canada and the United States customs, immigration, agriculture, security, and transportation agencies, while each government retains its separate legal obligations.

A June 2026 opening was planned but delayed while Canada and the United States sorted out remaining issues. A joint Canadian–American celebration was then cancelled amid heightened tensions. Separate commemorations followed before the bridge opened to traffic on July 27 with the backing of Canada, Michigan, and the United States government.

The bridge opened as both a representation of cooperation and evidence of a troubled bilateral relationship.

But that doesn’t mean the symbol wasn’t effective.

A bridge is most valuable when there’s something difficult to cross.

Architecture can connect two shores, but it can’t get the people on either side to meet in the middle.

That takes leadership.

As citizens we’re not in the negotiating room. We’re in the bleachers, watching the game. We see the public statements, the political performances, and the edited versions of events. And when all we see is one side of an argument, it’s easy to mistake that side for the truth.

Relationships need more than that.

They need people who will listen when the cameras are gone, keep talking when agreement seems far-off, and defend the relationship while challenging the other side’s position.

Gordie Howe was a bridge long before the bridge named after him was built.

He was a Canadian who became the face of an American team and earned goodwill on both sides of the border. His career wasn’t valuable because it was conflict-free, hockey is not a gentle sport. His career was valuable because he showed up, worked hard, and became someone his teammates and community could rely on.

Those are the same traits that make a good colleague, business partner, and leader.

The leaders of Canada and the United States would do well to take a lesson from Gordie Howe.

To build a bridge, you need to be a bridge.

* you can read this article in the Fall edition of Praxis Magazine at praxisleadership.org

In 2019, we bought a property on Lake Ontario. It felt like coming full circle.

My wife and I had bought our first home on Lake Ontario. The house we would move into after we got married. We were lucky, the house was being marketed by an agent that my wife knew well, and we were offered to make an offer.

It was a hot market, and it wasn't our highest bid. But my wife had written a letter to the owners about our plans to start a family there. They were a quirky older couple, and apparently it was a wolf crossing the frozen lake that finally "spoke" to them and said to accept our offer.

We were ecstatic. We had found our home post-wedding and our family of our dreams.

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After two traumatic miscarriages and all the fear and angst that that following pregnancy entailed, our first son was born healthy. A beautiful blond baby with the most symmetrical little face.

We had done it. Our family was on.

When our second son came along, this one with gorgeous red hair, we knew without a doubt just how deeply our lives would become immersed in emotional attachments. We were bathing in love and adoration.

Later, we would build our home on an island in the Thousand Islands, surrounded by the St. Lawrence River. Those toddler years were filled with reading, coloring, wrestling and yes, dance parties.

Coming home from work was like entering a gladiator arena with a hero's welcome.

"It's Daddy!"

Both boys would fly to the door to greet me.

One day, I came home and found my wife sad on the couch. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that it was the day that the boys were leaving home that she was grieving.

They were so little you couldn't imagine that day being so far away from us. Somehow she could feel that loss, while I could not.

Island life was wonderful to give us a buffer to the rest of the world, and certainly a buffer to work. But not so much. Ferries made simple trips complicated, and grocery shopping with two little kids was an expedition. My wife was an unbelievably dedicated mother, but this wasn't a great place to raise her family. Her parents were close, but their help wasn't easily available.

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We left the island and built our home on Loughborough Lake, fifteen minutes from her parents. Then, in 2019, we went back to Lake Ontario.

In our new home, the great room had a blank spot in it, and we weren't sure what would go there. Eventually, we decided to purchase a baby grand piano.

None of us could play. Our eldest had taken a few basic lessons at school, but we had no intention to force the issue of music on anyone. We just had a feeling that if we put a piano there, someone would use it.

Someone did.

The piano was part of our family life during COVID. Then one morning long after the lockdowns were over, I heard my eldest tinkering around with it as I left the house. He had some experience, but YouTube tutorials and online sheet music had made learning the instrument so accessible.

When I came back a few hours later, he was playing Interstellar by Hans Zimmer.

I was blown away. I figured he must have been practicing it secretly for days, maybe weeks. Instead, he had brought it close to life in just a few hours.

If you've seen Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, you'll understand why the music has so much weight.

At its core, the movie is about a father who leaves his children to save humanity. He promises his daughter that he will return, but time behaves differently in space. Hours go by for him, while decades go by on Earth. He watches messages from his children as they grow up without him. And he realizes that he missed most of their lives.

Tomorrow morning, our eldest son will leave home to start university.

Mixed feelings. I'm glad for the opportunities and experiences that await him. I want to be strong, happy and positive. But inside, it feels like something is being ripped out of me, just a little bit. I knew it would be particularly difficult for my wife, this day. In some ways, she had been grieving this day since the boys were little.

Tonight, he played Interstellar on the piano.

They say that when people face death, their lives flash before their eyes. As he played, it was his life flashing before mine.

I remembered the baby I held in the hospital. The toddler running around our house with his soother. The inquisitive little boy who loved to read and loved his alone time. His interest in our pets, technology, space and music. His wayfinding through elementary school, and then finding his place in high school, with his friends and his academics.

He has just turned eighteen.

He is a man now. A man who is leaving his home.

And as I listened, I finally understood the grief she had felt on the couch all those years ago. The distant day she had imagined was here.

But more than anything, even my sadness, I felt grateful.

Grateful for the gift of time I have been given with him, his brother and their mother.

Time is faster than we can fathom. But the time we shared isn't lost.

It's ours to cherish.

I remember one day coming to work and finding my parking spot taken. Of course, I had no sign out denoting it was my spot, but it had been mine for years. I was annoyed that this person had not been the least bit conscientious to leave “Dr. de Wolde’s” parking spot open for me.

After all, this was my building, purchased with my money, and I needed to park my car in my spot so I could get to work and tend to my clients and my patients. No more, though. Because of this horrible inconvenience and lack of consideration, I would have to deal with my employee. You know, the one who stole my spot.

It is interesting how we use the word “my” when we refer to things being ours: my parking spot, my building, my car, my career, my clients, my patients and my employees. It seems a little childish, in the same way a child would hold on to a toy and proclaim, “It’s mine!”

Not that there is anything wrong with the words “I” and “my.” We need them. But when everything begins and ends with what I need, what I think, how I look and what I own, it almost speaks to a philosophy of who we think we are within the context of this world.

You do not have to be on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or any other social media sites for long before you see posts that are denoting ownership of possessions, opinions, careers and appearances. It is an echo chamber of a culture that is telling us to make ourselves into our own “main character.”

While there is nothing wrong with acknowledging the fact that we are the main character in our own life, the problem begins when we assume to be the main character in everyone else’s life, as if they are nothing more than a supporting cast member in our life of needs, ambition and accomplishment.

Stewardship, not ownership, has a whole different mentality or philosophy behind it. It is us acknowledging the fact that we are not owners, but we are caretakers and custodians of what we have been entrusted with. It is a mindset of not what is mine, but what has been placed in my care and what can I do with it?

With a little bit of humility, I think that is something we all struggle with. Acknowledging the fact that we can’t take anything we own or accomplish with us into perpetuity, what might be an amazing paradigm shift in our thinking if we identified ourselves as a steward or ambassador, not an owner?

How would you change your actions knowing that?

When we think about what we have, perhaps we should ask ourselves a few questions:

Am I using what has been entrusted to me intentionally?

Am I accountable for it?

And, going a little bit deeper into philosophical thinking, do we own anything? Or are we simply entrusted with what has been given, earned and accumulated?

Money and resources are probably what ownership appears like the most and, consequently, feels the most personal. How we think about money could be the foundation in which ownership and stewardship change us.

Ownership is about how much we have accumulated and how securely we can hold it. Stewardship is what can we do with those resources, how intentionally are we using them and who can we help with them? Money tests our trust and priorities because there is tension between security and surrender.

Time is also a fascinating resource. You can’t store, save or recover time. Many say that time is measured in seconds, minutes and hours, but maybe we should measure it in moments.

When you think about this past week, were you intentional with the time entrusted to you? Or was it consumed with reaction and, often, distraction? What if you changed your mindset from “time is on my side” to “time is entrusted to me”? How would you change the way you use it?

Because many of us working in medical and veterinary fields have been entrusted with many abilities, opportunities and influence, I wonder how many of us have taken inventory of our gifts.

It takes a lot of hard work to earn or accomplish many of the things we eventually denote as our own. And let’s face it, not all of us is born with a voice like Whitney Houston, can play basketball like Michael Jordan or can understand the universe like Albert Einstein. In those very obvious cases, we often refer to those as “God-given gifts.”

The reality is, we all have gifts. It is simply a matter of discovering, exposing and developing them into something meaningful. Some of us know what our gifts are, but don’t actively use them. We live in an age where we have so many opportunities to have gifts within our family, workplace, vocation, community and church. Where do you have influence that is not being actively used for the common good?

Stewardship is not only what we have, but who we are.

In the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari discusses what could happen if humanity combined its oldest ambitions with the newest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Harari speculates that humans may shift from solving existential threats to pursuing personal immortality, happiness and godlike powers.

It is a provocative portrait of our desire not just to care for life, but to master it.

We often use the phrases “my body,” “my health” and “my ideas.” While those phrases are not necessarily wrong, stewardship would ask us what if our bodies and life isn’t just something we use or neglect at will, but something entrusted to us?

It is important that we care for the life that has been entrusted to us, not neglecting our physical, spiritual and intellectual well-being. But the motivation can shift when we identify as a steward, not an owner. Care is not motivated by appearance, performance or control. Care is a responsibility.

Like everyone else, I struggle with this concept and the balancing act between control and trust, somewhere between ownership and surrender, and between tending to my own needs and tending to the needs of those around me.

I think it all begins with who we are. And behaviour stems from identity.

I don’t think we are called to own everything, control everything or perfect everything.

We are called to be stewards.

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As stewards, we are custodians to the planet we inhabit and caregivers to the animals that share it with us. We cultivate relationships with family and friends. We nurture our bodies and minds. We discover, expose and deploy our personal gifts for good. We manage our time and resources to further something meaningful. We acknowledge the influence we have, and the responsibility that comes with it.

We have now shifted from “my” and “I” to “we” and “us”.

Which brings me back to the parking lot.

I now understand the real problem wasn’t the employee parking where she parked, but the unconscious stance I had taken as the centre of everything: my building, my money, my clients, my employee and my inconvenience. And when I referred to an employee as mine, it speaks to something more significant. A stewardship mentality doesn’t just change the way we think about what we own, but who we own. Employees, patients, family members, communities and audiences are not supporting characters in this movie of life. And they certainly don’t belong to us. Our influence in their life is something entrusted to us.

The parking spot was not the most important thing entrusted to me that morning. The opportunity to tend to the people and pets around me was.

Perhaps stewardship begins when I can look at “my spot” and remember that it was never really mine. It was my response that was my responsibility.

* to be published in Praxis Magazine - praxisleadership.org

It was a familiar but sacred scene in the surgical suite. A pregnant Labrador retriever in distress, panting heavily, her body exhausted from contractions. Her vulva swollen and wet with a mix of mucous and blood, but no puppy could be palpated in the birth canal.

Radiographs confirmed my concern that the pups were simply too large to pass naturally through her canal. After checking calcium levels and placing an intravenous line to support hydration and electrolytes, I prepared for surgery. A Caesarian Section.

Unlike in human obstetrics, where an epidural allows mothers to remain alert and responsive, animals often require general anesthesia. So, a tailored protocol was chosen, balancing the risks to both the bitch and her unborn litter.

Once under a deep plane, a midline incision through the skin and subcutaneous tissue revealed the linea alba, which was carefully elevated. With Mayo scissors, I extended the cut to reveal the uterus. The surgical light cast a sterile glow over the procedure, and beads of sweat gathered on my forehead as the anesthetic monitor beeped rhythmically in the background, its sound merging with the quiet tension of the room. The pet owner stood silently in the corner, clutching on to both a towel and hope, while briming with joyful anticipation.

I identified and raised the uterus outside the abdominal cavity, and using a pair of Brown-Adson forceps, I incised it with care and precision. A warm rush of amniotic fluid and blood spilled from the uterine body. Towels packed in anticipation absorbed the copious flow. And beneath the shimmering fetal sac, the first puppy was gently extracted, and its placenta gently pried from the uterine wall.

The technologist accompanying me, received it with steady hands, wrapped in a fresh, sterile towel. As she peeled the sac and suctioned its mouth, silence reigned. No sound, no cry. With increased urgency and my instruction, she swung the puppy like the pendulum of a large grandfather clock, then rubbed its chest with vigor. There was a twitch. Then a stretch. Then, finally, life. A gasp, a cry, and a flailing paw stretched into the air.

In unison, we in the room exhaled with joy and relief.

Here, in this sterile room, a breath of life, both mysterious and divine, had filled the lungs of another creature.

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In the story above, ‘the breath’ was an indication that life had begun, but is breathing the only evidence of life?

Veterinarians focus on the study of disease, medicine and surgery, and this is accomplished through an understanding of anatomy, physiology and biochemical processes, not just in the body, but the organisms, chemicals, and processes in this world that can affect them. There does exist, living creatures that do not breathe in the rudimentary way we would traditionally envision the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in ones’ lungs. And yet, anaerobic microorganisms, those that do not require oxygen for survival, are also categorized as ‘living’. An example that I dealt with many times was a bacteria known as clostridium; known for causing an array of infections in both dogs and cats. But there are also multicellular organisms, including a tiny parasite in Salmon, known as Hennerguya, that have lost their mitochondrial genome, which means it can’t perform aerobic respiration. And although plants exchange gases through tiny pores, they don’t have a breathing mechanism, and fungi use diffusion across cell membranes. So, I think it’s clear that breathing is not the sole determinant to classify something as alive.

Science can describe the processes by which something lives, but description alone does not tell us what value that life possesses or what obligations we have toward it. Many religions and philosophies have grappled with these questions. And for some, it is very central to their ideologies.

It’s curious that, in the biblical account, God creates the animals before He creates humans. The waters teem with living creatures, birds fly above the earth and the land produces livestock, wild animals and all the creatures that move along the ground. God sees that it is good. In Job 12:7–10, we read: “Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you.”

In Hinduism, living beings are expressions of the divine, and animals are part of the same continuum as humans. In Buddhism, all sentient beings share the capacity for suffering, and because animals are caught in the same cycle of life, death and rebirth as humans, they deserve compassion. In Taoism, animals, plants and humans are expressions of the same natural order. In Shinto, animals can be companions or manifestations of the kami, or divine spirits. In many Indigenous traditions, the natural world is sacred and alive; humans and animals are kin, and animals may be viewed as teachers, ancestors or partners in creation rather than subordinates.

These religions and traditions are distinct, but some common themes emerge. Almost all recognize animals as integral and symbiotic to the ecosystem of this world, and thus to creation itself. There is a shared essence, whether creatures are understood to be created by the same God or deity or to share a similar life-force with humans. Most emphasize compassion over domination.

If we really work hard to understand our covenant with the living creatures, we share this world with, stewardship becomes a clear manifestation of that relationship. That we don’t own, but rather are caregivers to, and custodians of, this beautiful world and the creatures that inhabit it.

In that operating room, I did not give life to the puppies carried by this Labrador mother. They were vulnerable, and their care was entrusted to me. My role was not to create life, but to use my knowledge and skill to participate in its care. To steward the living

- C.S. Louis

The first time I held a dying animal in my arms, I realized that veterinary medicine is not merely science; it is something closer to stewardship and sacrament.

The examination room was sterile, and unfortunately the procedure was routine, and yet something profound was being communicated between us: a silent acknowledgment of shared frailty, empathy, responsibility, stewardship and mystery.

I have lived much of my life in that space between creature and caregiver. And when I’ve had to make existential decisions out of love and compassion for my own pets, the profoundness of that power bestowed upon me has always been accompanied by the feeling of a sobering responsibility, which was laced with questions and humility.

I grew up on a working farm, where animals were both companions and commodities. I helped bring thousands of piglets into the world over many years and later witnessed similar creatures on the dinner table that same evening. I spent long nights supervising farrowing sows, ensuring the piglets were freed from their embryonic sacs and guided their way successfully to their mothers’ teats. I understood, even then, the weight of their purpose in the rhythms of life and death.

Later, I worked at the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo, where the animals were neither purveyed as pets nor property, but ambassadors to the public. Kept within enclosures, ideally matching their natural habits as best as possible, protected from disease and predation, and fed specialized, scientifically designed diets from the commissary, they nevertheless existed for us to observe, admire and learn. Years later, my wife and I travelled to Kenya, where I watched animals roam freely while facing the brutal realities of competition, predation, harsh environments and disease. The contrast was striking. In one setting they lived under our protection but were controlled under a form of dominion; in the other, we were simply guests within their home. Watching the Maasai live harmoniously within that ecosystem offered yet another lens through which to understand our relationship with animals. A perspective that animals are not possessions, but as partners in survival, identity, culture and community.

These earthy, clinical, and sacred experiences taught me that the bond between humans and animals is not merely sentimental. It is covenantal. And let’s face it, when it comes to humans, covenants are never tidy. They are marked by both love and limits, reverence and restraint, roles and responsibilities.

As a veterinarian, I’ve devoted my life to the care of animals of all types, often standing in the vulnerable space between wellness and suffering.

As a Christian, I’ve wrestled with the biblical call to dominion versus stewardship, wondering what it truly demands of us. And as an admirer of philosophy, I’ve long been drawn to the question that lies beneath every examination table and surgical suite: What do we owe, and what is our responsibility to these creatures who walk alongside us?

Over time, however, I came to realize that I had been asking an even larger question.

People will assume that this Substack and book-in-process is about animals.

It isn’t.

It is a book about us.

For more than thirty years as a veterinarian, I have discovered that every interaction with an animal also reveals something about the character and ethos of the human standing at the other end of the leash, the examination table, outside the zoo enclosure, or in the barn aisle.

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Animals have an extraordinary way of exposing our personality. They reveal our patience and our pride, our compassion and our selfishness, our willingness to serve and our temptation to control. They remind us that stewardship is not simply about caring for another living being, it is about becoming the kind of person who can be trusted with responsibility.

This realization changed the way I understood my profession. The questions raised by veterinary medicine extend far beyond veterinary medicine. They reach into our homes, our churches, our businesses, our communities and our relationships. How we exercise authority over the vulnerable says something profound about who we were, who we are and who we are becoming.

Like I said, this book is not primarily about animals.

It is about what our relationship with animals reveals about ourselves.

If we learn to steward our fellow creatures well, we may discover how to steward families, organizations, communities and ultimately our own lives.

This book is not a theological treatise or a technical manual. It is really a reflection and meditation. A journey through history, scripture, ethics, philosophy, science, leadership and lived experience. Along the way of this journey, I won’t pretend to offer easy answers. I eat meat, even as I mourn the deaths of animals I’ve known by name. I’ve euthanized suffering patients with mercy, and I’ve wrestled with whether mercy ever justifies death. I am no moral exemplar. But I am, I hope, a faithful observer and an honest voice that seeks clarity and truth.

My hope is not simply that, by the final page, you will see animals differently. More importantly, I hope you will see yourself differently and discover that caring faithfully for our companions on earth is one of the ways we are formed into more fully human caretakers of this miraculous creation.

Like the Torah and the Old Testament, we will begin “in the beginning.” Together we will explore the definition of life, examine the tension between dominion and stewardship, and wrestle with soul-searching questions about euthanasia, animal consumption and ethical responsibility. We will strive to understand our roles and relationships with animals, our desire to live alongside them, and the priesthood of care that all pet owners and veterinarians quietly assume.

Welcome to Of Creatures and Covenant.

I can still remember graduation day, although it now feels like a lifetime ago. There was an incredible sense of accomplishment, mixed with an almost unbridled enthusiasm to get out into the real world and make a difference. Coming from a family farm, where there were no restrictions on working hours, no planned vacations, and financial pressures were simply part of everyday life, I assumed becoming a veterinarian would feel comparatively easy.

On my very first day in practice, nothing particularly challenging presented itself. I was working alongside an older veterinarian with whom I had developed a strong relationship following an externship the year before. Whether it was confidence in my abilities as a new graduate, or simply his own desire to reclaim some work-life balance, by the end of my very first day he entrusted me with overnight on-call duty.

What could possibly go wrong?

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At around 9:00 p.m., my beeper chimed. When I returned the client’s call, the panic in her voice was palpable.

“My dog’s eye has popped out!” she screamed.

Instantly, my heart raced. Still, I knew that if I sounded anxious, the situation might escalate further. I asked her to meet me at the clinic immediately, and we both raced there separately.

As I drove, one thought kept repeating in my mind: I don’t remember being taught this in university.

I recognized the condition as a proptosed globe, but I wasn’t feeling confident in how to address it, other than I knew it would either need to be replaced or removed. I desperately hoped I could arrive a few minutes ahead of the client, giving me time to do some much needed research before she arrived.

But as I pulled into the parking lot, she was already there waiting for me outside the front door, crying uncontrollably while clutching her injured dog.

With my still youthful appearance, she must have wondered whether I was experienced enough to help her pet, or perhaps whetherI was truly a veterinarian at all.

I calmly told her I would unlock the back entranceand meet her at the front door in a moment.

Reassuring her that this condition, while certainly alarming, was still treatable; I promised her that I would take care of her dog.

Once inside the examination room, I deliberately slowed my movements and softened my voice, hoping to project calm despite the uncertainty and consternation in my own mind. After completing my examination, I confidently explained that I needed a few moments to prepare for the procedure, one I had yet to declare.

In reality,I rushed into the office, pulled out my notes and several reference textbooks, and quickly formulated a plan. Lubricate the globe immediately. Apply a hypertonic solution to reduce swelling. Induce general anesthesia. Perform a lateral canthotomy. Replace the globe. Place a temporary tarsorrhaphy.

A few weeks later, the sutures were removed.

The eye had been saved.

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Looking back, I realize that I succeeded not because I had been over-protected from difficulty, but because I had been exposed to it, with the right dosing. My externship mentors had provided guidance, training, and trust, while still allowing me enough independence to work through problems myself. And with the security of knowing help was available if I truly needed it, I found the confidence to navigate the case.

I think it’s safe to say that mentorship and apprenticeship have been foundational to the ethos of veterinary medicine since its inception. And, without foundational ethos, it becomes challenging to foster a healthy culture. Young veterinarians who entered the profession, naturally gravitated toward seasoned practitioners for guidance, support, and reassurance.

These stalwarts within our veterinary communities provided something more than just knowledge, they offered emotional and psychological safety. They represented a trusted backstop; a sense that if things went sideways, there was someone experienced nearby who could step in, shore-up the situation, and transform the moment into a learning experience.

Of course, this existed during a different era of veterinary medicine. It was a profession largely governed and owned by veterinarians themselves. Veterinary schools placed greater emphasis on preparing graduates for broad-based general practice, and regulatory bodies maintained protective boundaries around standards of care and professional autonomy.

Over the past twenty years, and especially the last decade, much of that landscape has changed. The acceptance of second- and third-party ownership has shifted many practices away from the traditional ethos that once anchored the profession. Alongside these structural changes has come an increasing emphasis on business metrics, scalability and technology. While these shifts have brought some benefits, they have also unintentionally contributed to an erosion of direct relationship-based mentorship culture.

Ironically, veterinary medicine’s remarkable resilience through difficult economic cycles, including the 2008 recession and the recent pandemic, attracted significant outside investment. Practice valuations soared, and many experienced practice owners, leaders, and mentors exited clinical practice altogether.

Their departure created a profound vacuum.

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At the same time, pet ownership surged dramatically during the pandemic, while the supply of veterinarians struggled to meet that growing demand. Yet perhaps the greater loss was less visible: younger veterinarians were increasingly deprived of the mentorship, support, and continuity that many previous generations had the privilege of receiving. They also lost opportunities to inherit and carry forward the professional ethos upon which the vocation had long been built.

The consequences extend beyond staffing shortages. Throughput pressures, fragmented continuity, and reduced mentorship opportunities have limited the environments where younger clinicians once developed pattern recognition, emotional regulation, confidence, judgment, and resilience under the guidance of experienced practitioners.

You see, mentorship is far more than conducting rounds, answering questions, reviewing charts, or supervising procedures. It is something much deeper.

As a young veterinarian, I was frequently encouraged to “expand my comfort zone.” Perhaps not quite as dramatically as the opening story of my first overnight emergency, but certainly in ways that challenged me to gradually extend the reach of the care I could provide. True mentorship helps young clinicians tolerate uncertainty, survive mistakes, develop sound judgment amidst collection of objective data, and ultimately expand their capabilities.

Young clinicians do not merely need protection from failure. They need guided exposure to difficulty.

Growing up on a farm, I was already working every morning before school, every evening after school, and every weekend by the age of ten. We cared for many animals, and their well-being depended on us meeting their needs for food, water, and clean, comfortable environments. It was not dominion, it was stewardship.

However, there were certainly times I felt overwhelmed. The physical labor, combined with school, sports, and social pressures, often felt heavy. Yet looking back, it was through those experiences that resilience slowly formed.

Psychologists sometimes refer to a concept called optimal deprivation, the idea that manageable levels of challenge or discomfort can stimulate growth, adaptation, creativity, and resilience without overwhelming the individual. In healthcare, this might involve a difficult surgery, managing uncertainty during a complex case, or learning to navigate emotionally charged situations under supportive mentorship.

Perhaps some of the anxiety, hesitation, and dependency we are witnessing among younger clinicians is not simply a function of work-life imbalance alone but also reflects our profession’s diminishing ability to provide the balanced combination of challenge and mentorship necessary for healthy professional development.

Systems that eliminate all struggle may unintentionally weaken development. Conversely, systems that overwhelm individuals without adequate support can destroy good people.

The role of mentorship, therefore, is not to eliminate difficulty, but to ensure that difficulty becomes developmental rather than destructive.

Modern healthcare has rightly become more attentive to mental health, burnout, and workload strain. Yet in protecting clinicians from destructive overload, we must be careful not to remove the formative experiences that create mastery.

Healthcare does not merely need intelligent clinicians. It needs resilient ones.

And resilience is rarely formed in isolation. It is forged through challenge, stewardship, mentorship, and guided struggle with the support of leaders in healthcare.

- Praxis Magazine • Summer 2026 - praxisleadership.org

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It was a quick trip.

We got up at 3:30 a.m. to drive to Pearson International Airport, catching an early flight to Kansas City with a short layover in Detroit.

What was in Kansas City?

The FIFA World Cup.

My wife and sons had surprised me with tickets at Christmas. For me, it was a bucket-list dream come true. I was excited to watch football at the highest level. What I wasn’t expecting was to come home with a deeper appreciation for who I am.

Both of my parents came from Dutch families. My father’s family immigrated to Canada in 1952, while my mother’s parents arrived four years earlier in 1948. Family legend has always included the joke that my mother was “made in Holland but born in Canada,” as my grandmother was pregnant during the voyage across the Atlantic.

I’ve always been fascinated by family history. There is an entire field devoted to the study of names called onomastics. It turns out that names tell stories, not just about families, but about geography, history, occupations, and culture. Mine certainly does.

My surname is de Wolde.

My father, before he passed away, spent years tracing our family tree. He was able to follow our ancestry back to a man named Jan Hendrik, born in 1716. In those days, particularly in the rural eastern provinces of the Netherlands, hereditary surnames were not yet universal. People were commonly identified through patronymics. Jan, the son of Hendrik, became Jan Hendriks. His son would become Hendrik Jans.

That all changed in 1811.

During Napoleon’s occupation of the Netherlands, every family was required to register births, marriages and deaths, and to adopt a fixed hereditary surname if they did not already have one. Families living in the commercial centres of western Holland had often used surnames for centuries, but in the rural provinces, many were choosing one for the first time.

Our family lived in Drenthe.

Jan Hendrik’s son, Hendrik Jan, adopted the surname de Wolde, becoming the first of our family to officially bear the name. In Dutch, de Wolde roughly translates to “the woods,” likely describing the place where the family lived.

A single surname had suddenly become part of our family’s permanent identity.

As interesting as I find all that history, it wasn’t until Kansas City that I truly felt what it meant.

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We had heard that tens of thousands of Dutch supporters had travelled from around the world for the tournament. The famous Orange Army had even shipped its iconic orange bus across the Atlantic for the pre-match marches.

My wife wasn’t entirely convinced joining thirty-plus thousand football supporters was the best idea. She envisioned a disorderly crowd fuelled by alcohol and emotion. Our boys, on the other hand, couldn’t wait.

As our Uber approached Main Street, we saw the orange bus crossing the intersection ahead of us.

We jumped out and joined the crowd.

Everywhere we looked was orange. Shirts. Scarves. Flags. Hats. Entire families lined the streets singing songs I had never learned yet somehow felt strangely familiar.

Looking back, nearly 36,000 supporters filled the streets.

Men.

Women.

Children.

Grandparents.

It was one of the friendliest crowds I’ve ever experienced.

My wife’s apprehension disappeared almost immediately as we became part of the procession ourselves.

We sang the songs.

We attempted the dance moves.

We laughed.

We smiled with complete strangers.

The passion was contagious.

It struck me that culture is what people celebrate before anything has been won.

The Orange Army March captured what ethos looks like in motion. Identity. Belonging. Shared memory. Shared values. There wasn’t yet a trophy to celebrate. There was simply a people who understood who they were.

That realization stayed with me for the rest of the tournament.

By the time we arrived at Arrowhead Stadium, dark clouds had gathered overhead. As we walked through the gates, the skies opened.

A torrential downpour soaked everyone in seconds.

Thankfully, we had packed ponchos.

Yes…they were orange.

Nobody cared about the rain.

The singing continued.

The atmosphere never changed.

Sitting only nine rows from the pitch, we watched the Netherlands defeat Tunisia 3-1. It was a memory our family will never forget.

Meanwhile, Canada was writing its own remarkable story. A convincing victory over Qatar propelled them into the knockout stage before defeating South Africa to advance to the Round of 16. For Canadian soccer supporters, it was an extraordinary moment in our nation’s sporting history.

The Netherlands also advanced, setting up a Round of 32 match against Morocco.

That evening, something unexpected happened in our home.

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Although both of my boys enjoy playing sports, they have never been particularly interested in sitting down to watch an entire match on television. This time was different.

The four of us, including my wife, sat together in our family room, leaning forward with every attack, every tackle, every save.

The Dutch have long been famous for “Total Football,” a style emphasizing movement, possession and technical brilliance. Ironically, it was Morocco who controlled much of the match with remarkable pace and precision.

Then came the moment.

A beautiful pass found Cody Gakpo inside the box.

One touch.

One strike.

The ball exploded into the back of the net.

As my boys and I jumped to our feet with high-fives and cheers, the television cameras found Gakpo on his knees. Only days earlier, he and his wife had shared the heartbreaking news that they had lost their unborn child. An outspoken Christian, his celebration reflected both joy and grief at the same time.

It was a powerful reminder that even life’s greatest victories are often carried alongside profound sorrow.

Unfortunately, Morocco equalized late. After extra time and a dramatic penalty shootout, the Netherlands were eliminated.

Had they won, they would have faced Canada.

For days, friends had jokingly asked me which team I would support if that happened.

Thankfully, I never had to answer.

I found myself cheering wholeheartedly for Canada as they continued their remarkable run.

Perhaps that’s what surprised me most about the entire experience.

Standing among thirty-six thousand Dutch supporters in the middle of Kansas City, I realized that heritage is about far more than ancestry.

It is about inheritance.

I inherited a surname.

A family story.

A history stretching back centuries.

Yet I also inherited something else.

Canada.

A country that welcomed both sides of my family following the devastation of the Second World War. A country that gave my parents opportunities they could never have imagined. A country where I was born, where my wife and I raised our sons, and where our own family story continues.

More recently, I’ve found myself spending considerable time in the United States, building friendships and working alongside people whose values, integrity and vision closely mirror my own.

I find myself genuinely loving all three.

The Netherlands reminds me where my story began.

Canada reminds me where it flourished.

The United States reminds me that shared values can create a sense of belonging long before shared blood ever could.

Every healthy nation, every healthy family, and every healthy profession depends on remembering who it is before deciding where it is going.

Perhaps that’s why ethos matters so much.

It isn’t simply a set of principles written on paper.

It is an inheritance.

And every generation has the privilege, and the responsibility, to carry it forward.

The scene was set.

It’s a beautiful day.

It’s June in Kingston, the sun is peeking out between the large cirrus clouds, and its reflection is twinkling on the lapping waters against the shore of Lake Ontario.

I walk with my mother along a waterfront cobblestone path. She’s older, and with the dampness on the stone, she tucks her arm into mine for some support.

My mom reminisced over my university graduation; I didn’t attend my high school ceremony. Both her and my father were present and relished in the accomplishment of their son graduating with his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. A proud moment indeed.

There was a small café outside the Isabel Bader Centre, and since we were an hour early for the ceremony, we decided to sit down and grab a coffee together. The café was abuzz with chatter, and it appeared we weren’t the only ones on this Sunday morning deciding to have a moment of connection before a monumental day. My Mom, a boomer grabbed her standard coffee and a cookie; it wasn’t a Tim Hortons, so there were no donuts to be had. I, a generation X’er, picked a healthy oat milk latte and cereal bar.

It wasn’t long when I received a text message from my wife. She had arrived at the performing arts venue on Queens University campus.

My wife and I have two boys, 17 and 15 respectively.

There is a phenomenon known as fetal microchimerism. During pregnancy, cells cross the placenta in both directions. Some fetal cells enter the mother’s body, and some maternal cells enter the fetus. What’s remarkable is that a small number of these cells can persist for decades after pregnancy. I suspect this plays a major role in how mothers are connected emotionally, psychologically and spiritually with their children. Fathers see and appreciate this.

The text message was requesting that I come and provide a hand carrying some boxes into the venue. A box filled with graduation gifts for the grade 12 graduates of Leahurst College. My wife, along with two other mothers had helped to prepare some of the after-ceremony festivities for the graduating class, including these personally made gifts, a trolley ride, a private dinner and an evening at one of the mom’s homes.

My mother and I scurried back down the cobblestone path to meet my wife at the car. I grabbed the box of gifts, and together the three of us made our way into the Isabel Bader Centre. My son and his brother were driving separately and would meet us later.

Upon entering, we were met with my wife’s family, and together we waited by the locked doors to the auditorium, in preparation of competing for the best seats. My wife was not to be denied the best seat possible, for her, and for her family.

While waiting, strings of parents and students entered the foyer; some of whom I knew, most I didn’t. But there were a few young men in the graduating class who had spent some time with our family, and I got to know them reasonably well. I made the rounds to say hello.

The doors swung open at quarter to the hour, and my wife quickly made entry to reserve a partial row, three rows from the stage. We sat with anticipation leafing through the program, and upon seeing our son’s name associated with multiple scholarship offers, it welled up feelings of pride.

It’s a shame my father couldn’t be here to experience this special occasion. He passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 67, fifteen years ago. Today’s outcome would have been evidence for the sacrifices made along the way.

My father was born in the Netherlands, in a small town on the border of Germany. During World War II, the Germans invaded the Netherlands and seized many of the major cities. The smalls towns on the border submitted with very little resistance.

After the liberation of the Netherlands, mostly by Canadian forces, its people were faced with a decimated country, filled with loss of lives and material possessions. For many, it was a catalyst to seek a new beginning.

The United States, Australia and Canada were three of the countries that opened their doors to the Dutch. And interestingly, many of the Dutch people that decided to emigrate, were members of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN), soon to change its name to the Christian Reformed Church.

My father’s family immigrated into Alberta, Canada. Taber to be exact. In a single room cottage sized bungalow, where a mother, father and ten children resided together.

The work was hard.

They labored in the sugar beet fields. It was common for the boys to quit high school early to support the family unit. My father quit in grade 9.

When my dad was 15, his father died of a massive heart attack and his mother developed kidney failure. Deemed to be a ‘burden’ to his surviving mother, a generous uncle from Ontario took him into his family, where he bonded with his first cousins.

My Dad didn’t have the typical child’s life. Focus wasn’t on play. Parents weren’t overly doting, and over-protection wasn’t exercised overtly. It was a childhood faced with poverty, war and death, interlaced with faith and belief.

His strength would be tested multiple times throughout his life, including financial hardships and a devastating barn fire, which completely obliterated my parents’ combined life’s work.

He persevered. That was his journey. His path. His example.

I remember when my first son was born. The joy that I shared with my wife, and the aw we felt facing that miraculous beginning, embodied a profound sense of responsibility.

You see, the word father is both a noun and a verb.

I am a father.

Any man can father a child.

But not every man fathers their children.

Providing guidance, mentoring, protection, wisdom and nurturing. That’s fathering.

Why? It has everything to do with preparation.

Preparation for your children to become independent and self-reliant. To face this world that, albeit has many beautiful attributes, can be challenging, cruel and capricious.

It’s hard. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard knowing they will be confronted with such harsh realities.

The questions become…

Have I prepared them?

Have I done enough?

Did I sacrifice enough?

Around the mid-point of the ceremony, the Grade 12 procession started. My son, along with his classmates marched along the outer isle wearing their graduation gowns and hats.

Leahurst is an amazing school, piloted by an incredible, passion-filled and determined leader. A leader amongst a cast of dedicated and supportive educators.

I remember the day my wife and I snuck into the Old Woolen Mill to check out the College. We were courting several choices for our son’s high school education and took a chance showing up on a holiday outside the school year. We bumped into a young man, a computer science teacher at the college. After a couple minutes speaking with him, we knew that God was purposeful in directing us here that day.

After the procession and the presentation of the Great Honors Awards, we got to the Big Five.

The Dream Big Award recognizes a student whose goals, initiative, and willingness to embrace opportunities show that they are already creating the future they imagine.

Luckily, I had the video recording started on my iPhone, capturing the moment that they announced my son as the recipient.

It was his award, but I know that my wife, younger son, and I felt like the real winners.

After the ceremony, I had the opportunity to meet some of the parents of my son’s classmates; the ones of whom I had gotten to know more personally. It was no shock to see that great kids come from great parents. And those strong young men, come from great father examples.

Later that evening, I was playing basketball with my son. I had just opened my Father’s Day card which said, “Best Dad”. I suspect there are a lot of ‘best dads’ out there.

I asked him, how a father could earn such a title. He gave a couple of the typical responses, like “not too strict”, “spends lots of time”, but the one I liked the most was, “talks and listens to us”.

Childhood is a brief stage in the journey of life. From the day I cradled him in my arms as a baby, to this day, where I witness him graduating high school.

It’s short.

And now he’s embarking on his journey of education, independence and vocation.

One can’t help but reflect, that…

We get older.

Time fades.

And the idea of leaving an “instruction manual” for your kids comes to mind often.

It’s imperative to prepare our kids for their place in society, relationships, success, balance and above all, faith. To mold them with confidence and strength. And, to provide them with the tools for grit and resilience to make it in this earthly world.

My wife, his brother, and I, love him, and don’t want to let go.

And even though we will always be here.

It’s time.

Time to set him free.

Because it’s his time.

His journey.

And his path to forge.

onversations with veterinarians is the future of independent practice.

Recently, I joined a Veterinary Business Institute panel with Dr. Peter Noel of Parallax Teleradiology to discuss how independent veterinary practices can grow without necessarily giving up ownership, culture, flexibility, or long-term control.

For a long time, many practice owners felt that selling to a corporate group was the only real path to scaling successfully. If you wanted better systems, better technology, better purchasing power, more sophisticated management, or an eventual exit, the assumption was that consolidation was the inevitable end point.

But I do not believe that is the full story.

The real goal is not to build a practice that is easy to sell.

The goal is to build a practice valuable enough that selling becomes a choice rather than a necessity.

That distinction matters.

Veterinary medicine has always been rooted in trust. Peter used that word early in the conversation, and I think it is one of the most important words in our profession. Whether we are talking about clinical practice, teleradiology, surgery, dentistry, emergency care, or succession planning, trust is the currency underneath everything else.

Trust is not a marketing slogan, and it’s definitely not something listed as a line item on a spreadsheet. It is not something that can be manufactured by software or purchased through a corporate platform.

Trust is built through relationships.

That is why independent practices still have a meaningful strategic advantage. They are often closer to the “why” of veterinary medicine. They understand the ethos of the profession because they are living it every day.

I often distinguish between culture and ethos. Culture is the “how” of a practice: how people behave, how teams communicate, how clients are treated, how decisions are made. Ethos is the “why.” It is the underlying set of values that gives the culture its direction.

Veterinary medicine has a deep ethos. Many of us entered this vocation because we had already been working with animals long before we had degrees behind our names. We believe animals have value. We believe they are worthy of care. We believe there is a responsibility attached to our knowledge and our skills.

For many veterinarians, this work is not merely a job. It is a calling.

That does not mean business is unimportant. In fact, the opposite is true. A practice that does not understand its business will eventually struggle to live out its calling.

One of the things consolidation has done, perhaps unintentionally, is force veterinarians to become more financially literate. Ten years ago, very few veterinarians were talking about EBITDA. Today, almost every practice owner has at least heard the term.

And that is not a bad thing.

EBITDA is a proxy for cash flow. Cash flow matters because it allows a practice to reinvest. It allows you to pay staff properly, buy better equipment, improve work-life balance, expand services, and protect the long-term health of the business.

It also increases enterprise value.

This is where many veterinarians need to adjust their thinking. Profitability is not a betrayal of the profession. Profitability is what allows a practice to remain healthy enough to serve.

The problem is not making money. The problem is losing the ethos that tells us what the money is for.

When I work with practice owners through myVETgroup, many come to us thinking they may want to sell. They are exhausted. They feel overwhelmed. They are carrying too much. They’re burnt out, and they imagine that selling will solve the problem.

Sometimes it will.

But often, the real issue is not ownership. The real issue is operational inefficiency, poor systems, lack of leadership development, HR stress, pricing confusion, or overdependence on the owner.

In fact, a large percentage of the practices I work with do not end up selling. Once we help them understand their options, many rediscover the joy of ownership.

One of my favourite sayings is:

Contrast is the mother of clarity.

You cannot make a clear decision until you understand the real choices in front of you. Selling may be one option. But so might restructuring, hiring, expanding, reducing owner production, developing leaders, improving margins, or changing the model of the practice.

I once worked with a specialist who was absolutely determined to sell. She was burnt out and tired. But after spending time with her, it became clear to me that she did not really want out of veterinary medicine. She wanted out of the way she was currently practicing it.

So we expanded her footprint, added exam rooms, hired more doctors, and reduced her personal workload. She became a three-and-a-half-doctor practice, doubled her cash flow, cut her clinical time significantly, and rediscovered her love for the profession.

That is success, for a single reason. She regained choice.

Another important issue is owner dependency. Many practice owners are the highest producers in their hospitals. I was guilty of that myself. I produced at a level that made my practices too dependent on me. That may feel good to the ego, but it is risky for the business.

If the business cannot function without you, it is fragile.

Reducing owner dependency improves work-life balance, protects the practice, develops the team, and increases value. The goal is not to make the owner irrelevant. The goal is to make the practice resilient.

Leadership matters here. A practice needs medical leaders, operational leaders, administrative leaders, and cultural leaders. Sometimes the most important leader is not the person with the longest CV. Sometimes it is the person who quietly carries the flame of the culture.

I used an analogy during the panel that I like: the lead dog on a sled team.

The lead dog is not necessarily the strongest workhorse. The lead dog has vision, judgment, composure, and endurance. The other dogs follow that leader. They do not see the horizon; they see the dog in front of them. That is why leadership inside a veterinary hospital matters so much.

Practice owners need to become less of the engine and more of the lead dog.

That transition requires humility, grit, and resilience. It also requires a willingness to be shaped by difficulty.

I have written elsewhere about the idea of optimal deprivation: the notion that growth often requires just enough challenge to force development without breaking the person. Too little challenge creates weakness. Too much challenge creates damage. But the right amount of struggle can build strength.

That is true in parenting. It is true in leadership. It is true in business. It is true in veterinary medicine.

The same applies to independent practice. The pressures are real. Staffing is difficult. Client expectations are changing. Technology is evolving quickly. Pricing is more complicated than it used to be. Corporate groups are still active. The market is more disciplined than it was, but consolidation has not disappeared.

Still, independent practices have advantages.

They can pivot quickly. They can make decisions without layers of bureaucracy. They can shape their own pricing philosophy. They can define their client experience. They can protect culture in a more personal way. They can remain close to the “why”, while executing on the “how.”

That flexibility is powerful.

One area where I think independents need to think differently is pricing. Historically, veterinary medicine often used broad fee guides or across-the-board annual increases. But the profession is now too diverse for that. A general practice, specialty hospital, emergency clinic, urgent care model, mobile practice, and teleradiology service cannot all be priced with the same blunt instrument.

We need more granular thinking.

There may be services we intentionally price at a lower margin because they align with our access-to-care values. There may be other services requiring advanced skill, equipment, time, and expertise that should be priced appropriately. A healthy practice can be both compassionate and financially disciplined.

Those two things are not enemies.

This came up clearly in the Q&A when a veterinary student asked how to turn away a less-than-ideal client with a pet in need of care for the sake of profitability.

My answer was simple:

Never.

A pet in need of care deserves care. That is foundational to the veterinary ethos.

I gave the example of an elderly client who brings in her dog because she thinks she has found a lump. You examine the dog, ask her to point it out, and realize she has mistaken a nipple for a mass. You reassure her kindly, without embarrassment, and perhaps you decide not to charge her for that visit.

Some people might see that as lost revenue.

I see it as earned trust.

That client will remember your kindness. She will tell people at church, at the grocery store, at the community centre, or around her neighbourhood. More importantly, you will have acted in accordance with the values of the profession.

That does not mean a practice should become financially careless. If you become the “free nipple exam” clinic, you may have a problem. But isolated acts of generosity are not business failures. They are often the very things that make veterinary medicine human.

Or perhaps more accurately, humane.

The future of independent veterinary practice will not be won by pretending business does not matter. Nor will it be won by surrendering everything to corporate logic.

It will be won by practices that understand both value and values.

Practices that know their numbers.
Practices that protect their people.
Practices that build trust.
Practices that develop leaders.
Practices that embrace technology wisely.
Practices that price with intelligence and conscience.
Practices that remember why veterinary medicine exists in the first place.

Consolidation will continue. Technology will continue. New business models will continue. Outside capital will continue to find veterinary medicine attractive.

That is not necessarily bad.

But veterinarians need to participate. We need to be present in the conversations shaping our profession. We need to be involved in ownership models, technology platforms, pricing tools, access-to-care solutions, and the future of clinical delivery.

If we do not help orient the profession, others will orient it for us.

And they may not carry the same ethos.

That is why independent practice still matters. Not because independence is automatically virtuous, and not because every corporate model is automatically flawed. There are good and bad examples in every category.

Independent practice matters because it preserves choice.

Choice for owners.
Choice for associates.
Choice for teams.
Choice for clients.
Choice for communities.
Choice for the profession.

A valuable practice is not simply one that someone wants to buy.

A truly valuable practice is one that gives its owner the freedom to decide.

To sell, or not to sell.
To grow, or stay intentionally small.
To partner, or remain independent.
To expand, or refine.
To step back, or step forward.

That is the future I hope more veterinarians will build.

Not practices trapped by burnout.
Not practices forced into transition.
Not practices reduced to spreadsheets.

But practices valuable enough that selling becomes a choice.

And meaningful enough that staying does too.

I recently joined Megan Sprinkle on Vet Life Reimagined for a conversation that moved through many parts of my veterinary journey: farm life, tragedy, practice ownership, technology, family, and the future of our profession.

But if there was one idea that held the conversation together, it was this:

Sometimes you have to let go of the branch.

Veterinarians are loyal people. We are loyal to our patients, our clients, our teams, our practices, and our profession. That loyalty is one of our greatest strengths. It is also one of the reasons we sometimes stay too long in places that no longer fit us.

We keep holding onto the branch because it feels safe.

But, there are other branches.

My own journey into veterinary medicine was not a single lightning-bolt moment. It was more organic than that. I always had an affinity for animals, but that affinity deepened over time.

When I was about ten, my father gave my brothers, sister and I a choice: we could move to a farm, or he would build us a swimming pool. I convinced my brothers to choose the farm because, in my mind, a farm was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A swimming pool could always come later.

Of course, I suspect the decision had already been made for us. Kudos to my parents for giving us the perception of participating in the choice.

As it turned out, the farm had a swimming pool anyway, so I hedged my bets reasonably well.

Farm life was hard work. We were up early, doing chores after school, working weekends, and learning what responsibility looked like. But it also brought our family closer together. I think that was my father’s real reason for moving us there.

Then, in 1986, we had a devastating barn fire.

My brother Rod came running toward the house, screaming that the barn was on fire. My father and I ran toward it. We had one of those old bank barns, and we could see flames coming from the hayloft windows. We ran to the lower level and began rushing animals out as quickly as we could.

We were rural, with no one nearby. But by what I can only describe as grace, a woman drove up the lane and began screaming that the barn was collapsing. She could not have known we were inside. My father and I ran out, and within seconds the whole building imploded.

Had we been two seconds later, we likely would have died.

We lost more than 600 animals that day.

The sights, sounds, and smells of that day remain etched in me. It was devastating. But it also deepened something in me. It confirmed that my life would somehow be connected to animals and to the people who care for them.

A year later, I worked at the Metro Toronto Zoo, and around the same time, I started my Bachelor of Science at the University of Guelph. Earlier, in Grade 7, my teacher had given me It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet by James Herriot for a novel report. It was the first book I ever really read, and like so many veterinarians of my generation, Herriot helped awaken something in me.

Eventually, veterinary medicine simply felt like the path.

I graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in 1993 and became, in many ways, the typical Gen X veterinarian. I worked 60 to 70 hours a week, carried a beeper, and did my own on-call. Over my first six years, I took only two weeks of vacation.

At the time, it did not feel like sacrifice. I loved the work.

That is one of the complicated truths about veterinary medicine. It is harder to manage work-life balance when you deeply love what you do.

I spent time in veterinary education at Utrecht in the Netherlands, and eventually practiced in England for a short stent. Those experiences shaped me. One practice in England especially stayed with me. It was a converted home. The front door was locked, and clients knocked when they arrived. Someone would open the door and welcome them in.

It was small, efficient, intimate, and deeply relational.

That practice reminded me that veterinary medicine is not merely clinical. It is relational. We care for animals, but every animal is attached to a human being. The bond with the client matters. The experience of the pet matters. The warmth of the space matters.

That thinking later influenced how I designed my own hospitals. I did not want them to feel sterile or cold. I wanted warmth, wood, calmness, and comfort. I wanted pets and people to feel like they were walking into a place of care, not fear. Something emanating the feeling of ‘home’.

Eventually, I opened my first practice in 2001. I remember the timing because I was living in the basement apartment of a Labrador breeder who had kindly offered me a place to stay while I started the business. I woke up early one morning and saw the planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11th. It was a terrible moment in history, and I remember thinking, among many other things, that it was a frightening time to be opening a veterinary practice.

But I did.

Over time, I built five practices, all from scratch.

Practice ownership gave me autonomy. It gave me the ability to create a culture, design workflows, make clinical decisions, and build something that reflected my values.

But ownership also brought the business side: HR, marketing, client complaints, staffing problems, finances, and administration. Veterinary medicine may be a calling, but a practice is still a business. And if the business is not healthy, the medicine eventually suffers.

That is something many veterinarians struggle to accept.

We love the work so much that it can feel almost uncomfortable to succeed financially. We feel the rising invoice in the exam room. We worry about access to care. We know some clients are struggling. So, we have to be reminded that success is not greed. A successful practice allows us to pay staff properly, invest in equipment, improve standards of care, and sustain the mission; an ethos rooted in the idea that animals are worthy of care, protection and advocacy.

Still, there came a time when I had to recognize that the branch I was holding onto was costing me something.

I had built five practices, and I loved clinical medicine. I loved the clients, the patients, and the teams. But my wife eventually helped me see that I was too consumed by it. Even when I was physically home, I was often still mentally at the clinic thinking about a patient, a client, a Google review, a sick staff member, or a business problem.

There are two kinds of presence: physical presence and mental presence.

My family needed both.

So in 2020, I sold my practices. This was before the 2021 surge in veterinary practice valuations. I did not sell for money, I sold for work-life balance. I sold for my family.

That was my moment of letting go of the branch.

And when I did, other branches appeared.

I started myVETgroup because I had seen a gap in the profession. Many practice owners were making major transition decisions without the right support, and sometimes under duress. There was often an imbalance of power, information, and experience.

But more importantly, I saw veterinarians who thought they wanted to sell when what they really needed was clarity.

One of my favourite sayings is:

Contrast is the mother of clarity.

You cannot know which path is right until you understand the options in front of you:

Sell to an associate.

Build a leadership team.

Expand and Grow.

Restructure.

Transition to corporate ownership.

Stay independent.

Change the practice model.

Improve profitability.

Reclaim your time.

There is no single right answer. There is only the answer that aligns with your values, your family, your team, and your vision.

That same principle has shaped my work beyond myVETgroup. I have become involved in several companies across veterinary technology, AI, access to care, practice innovation, and communication. In many ways, these opportunities came from networking with veterinarians, entrepreneurs, and colleagues collaborating, while asking good questions.

I have realized that veterinarians often underestimate their value.

A DVM or VMD is not only a clinical credential. It is a lens through which we have a way of seeing the relationship between animals, people, medicine, ethics, and trust. That perspective is desperately needed in the broader pet and veterinary industries.

This is especially true in the age of AI.

Technology is now moving faster than regulation. That creates opportunity, but it also creates risk. I recently wrote an article for Praxis Magazine called “Orientation Over Acceleration,” and I believe that phrase matters. We do not need to reject technology. But we do need to orient it properly.

Just because we can build something does not mean we should. Capability is not permissibility.

Veterinarians need to participate in shaping the tools that enter our profession. AI will not replace veterinarians, but veterinarians who use AI wisely will be at the forefront. The danger is not technology itself. The danger is allowing technology to be built without the veterinary ethos at the table.

At one industry dinner, I found myself in a room of about sixty people connected to the veterinary space. I was the only veterinarian.

That should concern us.

Those outside our profession don’t always get that Veterinary medicine is a relationship business. And relationships do not show up neatly on an Excel spreadsheet. If we assess a practice only by numbers, we miss the subjective side, including the culture, the trust, the client bond, the staff experience, the standard of care.

In clinical medicine, we would never make an assessment from objective data alone. A CBC and chemistry panel matter, but so does the history, the exam, the context, and the story. Businesses are no different.

The same is true of the future of veterinary medicine. We are moving toward continuous monitoring, predictive health, collaborative care, and more client involvement. Tools like glucose monitors, wearables, transcription systems, and AI-driven data platforms will change how we understand health and disease.

That should excite us. But it should also call us to responsibility.

Clients will have more information. They will want to participate more actively. Rather than keeping them at arm’s length, we need to involve them. If you tell someone, they may forget. If you show them, they may remember. But if you involve them, they begin to understand. Thank you Benjamin Franklin.

That may be one of the next great shifts in veterinary medicine: from transactional care to collaborative care.

We also need to stop assuming that one model fits the whole profession. Veterinary medicine is no longer a single, uniform structure. We have general practice, urgent care, emergency, specialty, mobile, concierge, independent, corporate, hybrid, venture-backed, and community-based models. We have different regions, different socioeconomic realities, different client expectations, and different cultural understandings of the human-animal bond.

Broad strokes no longer work.

Each practice needs to understand its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Each owner needs to know their own vision. Each veterinarian needs to consider where they fit best.

And they need to be willing to pivot.

That brings me back to the branch.

When we are loyal, tired, overcommitted, or afraid, we can mistake the branch we are holding for the only branch available. But it is not.

There are many ways to live out a veterinary vocation. Clinical practice may remain the heart of the profession, and it certainly remains the heart of mine, but our degree, our experience, and our ethos can serve animals and people in many ways.

There is no wrong journey, provided it is pursued with integrity.

As veterinarians, we do not need to lead only from what we have done right. We can also lead from what we have done wrong, what we have learned, and what we wish we had understood sooner.

The future of veterinary medicine will not simply happen to us unless we allow it to. If we have a vision for what this profession should look like in five or ten years, we cannot leave it to someone else.

We need to participate.

We need to take our place at the table.

We need to help shape the change.

And sometimes, to do that, we need to let go of the branch.

I recently had the pleasure of joining Peter Tanella on his podcast, Just Vetting, for an array of conversations about veterinary medicine, practice ownership, succession planning, technology, and the deeper ethos that has shaped my career.

After reflecting on the podcast conversation, I realized that much of what we discussed traces back to a few defining moments.

I was drawn to animals early in life, which might sound ubiquitous in the journey towards a career in Veterinary Medicine, except that when I was six years old, I was mauled by a pack of stray dogs. My mother had to come running outside to save me with a broom-in-tow. Strangely, that experience did not push me away from animals, rather it made me want to understand them more personally.

A few years later, my father gave my brothers, sister and I a choice: a swimming pool or a farm. As the eldest, I led my siblings to choose the farm, partly because I figured we could always get a swimming pool later; I was hedging my bets. As it turned out, the farm came with a pool, so perhaps it was one of my first successful strategic decisions.

That farm changed the trajectory of my life.

In Grade 7, I was assigned It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet by James Herriot. Like many veterinarians of my generation, Herriot’s stories opened something in me. They made veterinary medicine feel like a calling, not just a career.

Then, in 1986, we had a devastating barn fire. My brother came running up the lane screaming that the barn was on fire. My father and I ran into the barn and began trying to get animals out as quickly as possible. A woman who had seen the fire drove up the lane and yelled for us to get out because the barn was collapsing. Within seconds of our escape, the building came down.

My father and I were lucky to survive that day, but we lost many animals.

The sounds, the smells, the suffering, and the loss are etched in me forever. I think that was when I truly knew I would spend my life working with animals.

From there, veterinary medicine became the path. I worked at the Metro Toronto Zoo, studied at the University of Guelph, spent time at Utrecht (the Netherlands), graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in 1993, and later practiced in England.

Like many veterinarians of my era, I worked extraordinarily hard. Sixty to seventy hours a week, plus on-call, was normal. In my first six years, I took two weeks of holidays total. At the time, I did not think much of it. Juxtaposed to the farm, that was simply what we did. And when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work.

Eventually, the question became unavoidable: why was I pouring that level of energy into someone else’s practice?

So, near the end of 1999, I opened my first hospital. Over time, that became five de novo practices. I never purchased a practice. I built them.

But building comes with a cost. Veterinary medicine can saturate your being, because of the passion we have for the animals we serve. In many ways, we are metaphorically married to the profession. For me, the governor eventually became my family. They reminded me that they wanted more of my time, not just the leftovers.

That was the real reason I sold my practices in 2020. It was not a monetary decision. It was a family decision.

One of the things Peter and I discussed was the base ethos of veterinary medicine. Having practiced and worked with veterinarians across Canada, the U.K., New Zealand, Europe, Asia, and beyond, I have seen cultural and structural differences. But the similarities are far greater. There is a shared sensibility among veterinarians: an empathy toward animals, a sense of responsibility, and a covenantal relationship with creatures entrusted to our care.

That idea is also at the heart of the book I am slowly writing, Of Creatures and Covenant.

We also talked about what surprises many people when they enter the profession. Two things stand out.

First, veterinary medicine is not just about animals. There is always a person attached to the animal. Communication becomes one of the most important clinical skills we develop.

Second, veterinary medicine is a business. For many of us, that once felt almost taboo to say. We would probably do the work for free if we could. But the truth is that a healthy practice allows us to provide better care, pay our teams properly, maintain standards, and build sustainable lives.

That realization is part of what eventually led to my work with myVETgroup.

When I sold my own practices, I had good people around me: a local lawyer and accountant whom I trusted. But what I did not fully appreciate was that veterinary mergers and acquisitions require specific expertise. There was an imbalance of power, experience, and information.

Afterward, some consolidators approached me about helping them acquire practices. But I knew that was not the team I wanted to be on. I did not want to become a facilitator of corporatization. I wanted to be a resource for practice owners.

That is why we built myVETgroup as a fiduciary-minded advisory team for veterinarians. We are not simply brokers. Brokering may be one verb in the process, but it is not our identity. Our purpose is to help practice owners understand their options, improve their businesses, protect their teams, and make decisions with clarity.

In fact, many of the practices I work with do not end up selling. Once owners better understand their numbers, their opportunities, and the ways they can improve profitability or work-life balance, many rediscover their passion for ownership.

That is an amazing outcome.

Peter and I also discussed succession planning. Timing matters immensely. Years ago, we might have said owners should begin planning two or three years ahead of a transition. Today, I think three to five years is wiser.

A practice owner must understand their numbers, clean up legal and tax structures, optimize operations, and create options. One of my favourite sayings is: contrast is the mother of clarity. Until you place the options on the table like associate buy-in, internal succession, corporate exit, hybrid partnership, or continued ownership, it is hard to know what is truly right.

We also talked about the problem of the owner being the business. In many practices, the owner is the highest producer and the cultural cornerstone. If that person leaves abruptly, the value of the business can drop dramatically.

I shared the story of a single-doctor practice owner producing roughly $2.5 million in revenue on his own. Financially, he was doing well. Personally, he had no work-life balance. From an enterprise value perspective, the practice was over-dependent on him. Over three and a half years, we helped transform that practice into a multi-doctor business and increased its enterprise value dramatically. Just as importantly, the owner got his life back.

That is the kind of work I find deeply satisfying.

We then moved into technology and NerveX Neurotechnologies, where I serve as co-founder and Chief Veterinary Officer. We are a hardware-AI company out of the University of Toronto, focused on bringing medical-facing devices into the veterinary space.

Much of medicine is episodic. We see a patient once or twice a year, for twenty or thirty minutes. A blood sample is a single point in time. But continuous monitoring changes the equation. Human medicine is already moving this way through wearables. Veterinary medicine will follow.

I believe hardware will matter just as much as software. AI is powerful, but we need appropriate vessels through which AI can responsibly enter clinical practice. That includes ambient tools, medical devices, and continuous monitoring systems designed for the exam room; not simply personal phones being brought in to record client conversations.

That distinction matters.

Technology is moving faster than regulation, and that creates ethical responsibility. I recently wrote an article for Praxis Magazine called “Orientation Before Acceleration,” and that title captures my view well. I am strongly in favour of innovation, but not reckless acceleration. Veterinarians need to participate in shaping these tools. We need a voice in how they are developed, regulated, and integrated into practice.

The future of veterinary medicine will require new skills. Young veterinarians will need to be adaptive, technologically literate, ethically grounded, and committed to lifelong learning. Medical knowledge is changing quickly, and continuous monitoring will reveal patterns we have never seen before.

We also talked about ownership models. Veterinary ownership is no longer one thing. There are independent practices, corporate practices, hybrid models, joint ventures, and partnerships between veterinarians and non-veterinary business operators.

I believe independent practices will always have an important place. They are often rooted in personal vocation, community connection, and owner-driven standards. But corporate groups have also changed the profession, sometimes for the better. They have forced us to understand KPIs, business structure, competitive strategy, and operational discipline.

The future, I suspect, will include more hybrid models: veterinarians partnering with people who bring strength in HR, finance, marketing, operations, or strategy. What matters is alignment. The veterinarian must retain appropriate autonomy over medicine, and the business must be built around the best interests of patients, clients, and staff.

That is part of what we have tried to build with RoyalVET, a model that invites different people with different strengths to come together around a shared ethos.

Toward the end of the conversation, Peter asked how I stay grounded while working across so many projects.

My grandfather once told me, “The busiest person has the most time.” For many years, I thought that was nonsense. When I owned five practices, I was busy and had no time.

But I understand it differently now.

The busiest person does not magically have more time. The busiest person has usually learned how to organize, schedule, and protect time. That means boundaries. It means being efficient. It means being fully committed to the thing in front of you, and then disconnecting when that time is done.

When I owned five practices, I would come home physically present but mentally still connected to work. Today, I try to be present in both senses of the word. Present in the room, and present in mind.

That may be one of the most important lessons I have learned.

Veterinary medicine has given me a life of purpose, challenge, and opportunity. It has taken me from a family farm to hospital ownership, from clinical practice to advisory work, from succession planning to artificial intelligence. But underneath all of it, the same question remains:

How do we steward what has been entrusted to us?

Our patients.
Our clients.
Our teams.
Our families.
Our profession.
Our time.

That, more than anything, is what I continue to wrestle with, and what I hope to keep contributing to in the years ahead.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are facing catastrophe.

Maybe a plane crash. Possibly a natural disaster. What if you were lost in the wilderness with a small group of survivors?

The challenges in these circumstances are immediate and unforgiving. The injured require triage. Clean water and food sources must be secured. Shelter must be constructed before nightfall, changes in the elements and in advance of falling temperatures. The terrain is unfamiliar, rough and unmapped. Supplies are contaminated and limited. Communication is gone.

Panic amongst the group threatens cohesion. Fatigue and anxiety cloud judgment. Fear and grief fracture morale. Conflict between survivors begins to simmer.

And yet, decisions cannot wait.

Challenges need to be strategically identified and prioritized. Do we stay put or attempt to navigate to safety? Who receives care first? How do we ration food and water? What are the skill sets of the individuals, and how can they contribute to the success of the group?

Eventually, the defining question emerges: Who leads?

There is no checklist for this moment. There is no formal review process, no resume to scrutinize and no election. The group instinctively looks towards someone that subjectively embodies the ideal characteristics. And almost always, that person is not the most voiciferous, but in all likeliness, is the most anchored.

They bring calm without paralysis. They demonstrate strength and competence without arrogance. They communicate clearly and with clarity. They make difficult decisions when hesitation would cost time, a successful outcome, and possibly lives. They carry moral authority, which gathers trust around them quickly.

In crisis, leadership is revealed not by a title, but by orientation. That doesn’t mean that credentials don’t play a role, of course they do. Formal credentials matter because they establish a verified baseline of competence and accountability, protecting the public and stabilizing trust in complex systems. However, they don’t guarantee success of outcome.

The same dynamic plays out in business, and perhaps nowhere more acutely than in healthcare. Our organizations are not wilderness survival camps and sites of natural disasters, but under pressure they reveal similar dynamics: unequal skill sets, personality conflicts, resource constraints, moral disagreements, and hidden agendas.

When pressure rises, culture either fragments or coheres around a leader.

Stephen Covey, in The Speed of Trust, offers a simple but powerful equation: strategy multiplied by execution produces results, but only in the presence of trust. Without trust, friction increases, speed decreases and costs rise.

Trust is not sentimental. It is structurally anchored and built on a foundation of moral authority and orientation.

We are living in an era of unprecedented capability in healthcare. Robotics assist in surgery. Artificial intelligence drafts medical records and interprets diagnostics. Corporate capital consolidates practices, and productivity metrics measure every movement within the business.

Technology and capital are accelerating faster than reflection, and historical reflection is necessary for assessment.

The danger is not innovation. The danger is misalignment.

C.S. Lewis warned in That Hideous Strength that danger emerges when capability begins to masquerade as permission. Just because something can be done does not mean it ought to be done. Freedom is not the permission to pursue impulse; it is the disciplined power to pursue what is right.

Vision without ethical calibration becomes speed without direction, and acceleration without orientation becomes hazardous and costly.

In healthcare, in particular, leadership must be framed as stewardship rather than control.

We do not own our patients, we serve them. We do not demand compliance from teams, we cultivate responsibility.

In interviews with prospective associates, I would often say, “I don’t want to be your boss.” These are educated professionals. If culture is healthy and expectations are clear, management becomes mentorship and guidance, rather than tyranny and domination. The problem with control, is that it seeks compliance, but stewardship seeks flourishing. And if stewardship is replaced by control, the costs are rarely immediate, they are cumulative and exponential.

You see, culture typically doesn’t disappear overnight, it erodes quietly. Mentorship diminishes insidiously. Referral thresholds lower out of professional insecurity, rather than patient necessity. Risk tolerance drops, and burnout hides behind the language of efficiency.

Financial statements rarely capture these losses; they do not show up on an excel document spontaneously in a cell. The Profit & Loss statement can’t provide real-time reflection on cultural decay. But the human balance sheet does, if you are observing assiduously.

Poor leadership rarely causes dramatic collapse. More often, it catalyzes slow institutional decay over time.

I often use the analogy of the lead dog on a sled team.

The lead dog has the clearest vision and sees the horizon. The others in the pack only see the dog in front of them. There is a dependency. Vision matters. Direction matters.

But vision alone is insufficient, as a team can move quickly in the wrong direction.

What distinguishes the true lead dog is moral calibration, a steady alignment between action and principle, listening and being heard. Trust is earned, not demanded. Respect is cultivated, not imposed.

Calm under pressure is an inherent character trait, reinforced and practiced long before crisis arrives. Communication involves both understanding and being understood. Decisiveness has to be balanced by fairness. Leadership is not situational; it is continual and consistent. And, especially in times of uncertainty, resilience and endurance signal to followers that the leader can withstand pressure, stay the course and ultimately prevail.

Leaders can rise to the occasion, but success is grounded when defaulting to the right orientation.

Healthcare will continue to evolve, and technology will advance. Capital will flow, and new business models will emerge. Artificial intelligence will become more embedded in clinical workflow. Metrics will grow more granular and precise.

Acceleration is inevitable.

The defining question, however, is not: “What can we build?” It is: What governs the builders?

Orientation precedes execution. Ethics precede innovation. Trust precedes scale. In medicine, we honor the Hippocratic Oath, “first, do no harm”.

Without moral calibration, capability becomes destabilizing. However, with it, capability becomes transformative.

Now, let’s return to the wilderness.

Whom would you choose to follow?

It will likely be the individual who is calm but not passive. One who is decisive and fair, but not reckless. Who shows competence but embodies humility. They are optimistic without denial, and anchored in principle rather than ego.

Leadership is not merely positional. It is orientational.

In catastrophe, orientation determines survival. In healthcare, it determines trust. And in an age defined by acceleration, orientation may be the most valuable asset we possess.

- Praxis Magazine • Spring 2026 - praxisleadership.org

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