A Day to Be Grateful…I Am So Lucky to Have Been Born in Toronto

Today is one of those extra special days to be grateful.

Rachel is home for the weekend and Max has a job!

Back in 1989, I moved to the US to attend graduate school at Arizona State.

I wanted to live in the US and figured the best way here was through graduate school. I moved to Phoenix, got my degrees and had to figure out how to get sponsored. Pat Rile (Eppler, Guerin and Turner) took me under his wing and tried to teach me about the stock market. I did not want to be a stock broker, but I did not want to leave the US and they were willing to sponsor me. I made a lot of cold calls and had some luck, but I earned my green card. It only took 15 years.

I’ve been held back leaving Toronto on my way back to the US and at JFK in the same room people were being detained today. Ellen was always let through and it is a scary thing to just sit and wait and not know where your spouse is or what paperwork you may have gotten wrong.

Until today I did not know the true power of the ACLU and was glued to my Twitter stream mostly searching and listening for news. I saw Chris Sacca raise millions for the ACLU using Twitter and the ACLU’s late night mini victory:

One small story in millions of stories of course, but an important day to take some action and be grateful for our freedoms.