#160 Peter Cundill

What I learned from reading Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist by Christopher Risso-Gill. ---- Excellence as a goal in itself had been drummed into him from early boyhood. I’m convinced that to achieve real greatness a person needs above all to have passion but at the same time immense discipline, concentration, patience and an unshakeable determination to become a master of his craft. There is a choice of courses in life: either to seek equilibrium or to enjoy the heights and suffer the depths. You need to get into some situations which make your gut tight and your balls tingle. Do the unappealing things first. Once you have done your homework properly and are absolutely convinced that an investment is right you should not hesitate or wait for others to share the adventure. The price at which you start buying will almost invariably be imperfect but that should never discourage you. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit. (Aristotle) The more that I think about the way the Greeks, especially the Spartans, regarded the subject of exercise and the necessity of maintaining peak levels of physical fitness, the more I am convinced that the health of the mind and the spirit are either bolstered or hampered by the condition of the body. Concentrate with absolute clarity on one thing at a time. The mantra is patience, patience, and more patience. Think long term and remember that the big rewards accrue with compound annual rates of return. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  This book is a biography, not an investment manual. But those seeking insights into the thinking of one of the greatest value investors of all time will find it has much to offer. It is more by way of an epic, describing a journey that spanned more than 70 years, most corners of the globe, and a broad array of human endeavor: commercial, artistic, romantic, and adventurous. It is a tale of hard-won professional development, extraordinary challenges faced and survived, sometimes only barely so. It is supported by 44 years of meticulously-kept daily journals, written in tiny script,

• 0:43David Senra?

  which are intimate, utterly frank, self-admonishing, and confessional. They encompass every aspect of what Peter Cundill justifiably referred to as his wonderful life: his professional career with all of its vicissitudes, his numerous love affairs, and his sporting achievements; his passions for the kind of physical challenges that not only test endurance but also confront the participant with moments of stark terror usually associated with war or natural disaster. The journals explore depression and self-doubt. They tell not just of successes but also of failures and the lessons learned as a result.

• 1:25David Senra?

  And they serve the function of a commonplace book in which Peter noted passages from his extensive reading, commented on them, and often developed the ideas they prompted. His interests spanned a diversity of disciplines, springing from a genuinely insatiable curiosity, a characteristic he regarded as a vital component in every aspect of life, and especially in his professional life. The journals also exhibit a thoroughly open intelligence. Peter was ready to try almost anything and prepared to work to achieve success in any venture, or in the acquisition of any skill he decided to undertake.

• 2:05David Senra?

  Mastery often came at a real personal cost, because, as he freely confessed, he was far from being naturally gifted at everything.

• 2:16David Senra?

  What counted always was the learning process. The importance of continuing to learn throughout his life was a reoccurring theme. In his professional journey, Peter became more than a highly regarded and immensely successful mutual fund manager who made fortunes for himself and others. He was also a teacher and mentor, generous with his time, and fully prepared to share his experience with aspiring new practitioners. This dedication to his profession, to the encouragement of its new blood and the propagation of the principles of value investing on the foundations laid by Graham and Dodd, would have been continuing today. And this book would have been an autobiography, had Peter not been struck by the affliction

• 3:00David Senra?

  of fragile X-associated tremor ataxia syndrome, a neurological disease whose symptoms closely resemble that of Parkinson's, but is far less amenable to treatment. The story of Peter's life is now, of course, concluded. But as I was working with him daily on this and the previous book, I came to realize that his finest hour was in fact in his brave struggle with his deteriorating disability. He was entirely without self-pity, good-natured and full of humor, and determined never to surrender to hopelessness or despair.

• 3:41David Senra?

  In this book, the reader will make the acquaintance of a remarkable, generous, multifaceted, and complex man, who I had the privilege, for over 30 years, of calling a friend. That was an excerpt from the book that we're talking about today, which is "Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist," and it was written by Christopher Risso Gill. And this was another book I only found because it was recommended to me by a listener. I saw the title, I was like, what is going on here? So I downloaded the Kindle version, read the sample, loved it from the very beginning, and quickly ordered the book. I need to address the title, though.

• 4:24David Senra?

  And it's actually a quote from a writer and philosopher that Kundo loved, and that's Aldous Huxley, I think is how you pronounce his first name. And this is a quote from his book, Beyond the Mexican Bay, which is where Peter got the idea for the title of this book. And this is Huxley writing, "The commonest, one might call it, natural rhythm of human life is routine punctuated by orgies. Routine supports man's weaknesses, makes the fatigue of thought unnecessary, and relieves them of the intolerable burden of responsibility. Orgies, whether sexual, religious, sporting, or political, provide that periodical excitement which all of us crave." And now, having finished the book and looking back at the life of Peter Kundo, I think

• 5:09David Senra?

  that's a good description of him as a person. Obsessed thirteen, completely single-minded and focused on excellence, and yet filled his life with an amazing array of different experiences, events, and just crazy things that he went after. So I want to fast forward, I'm going to skip over his early life. I want to start when he is 25 years old, because this, I want to go right to the point which makes this book very, very unique. And it's this daily journal that he kept up for 40-plus years and is the main basis of the book. And when I look back on the parts I highlighted, almost all of it is his own actual words, taken directly from his journal. So I want to, let me just go right to the beginning where he gets this idea. It says, "During this time," he's 25 years old at the time, "Peter made a momentous

• 5:54David Senra?

  decision. On August 16, 1963, he began to write the journal that he then kept faithfully, day by day, for over 40 years."

• 6:04David Senra?

  He had learned that a private diary could potentially be one's best friend, an uncritical confidant for one's frustrations and pent-up emotion, and a sounding board for the pros and cons of life's decisions. The exercise can be habit-forming, even addictive, and Peter was naturally disposed to establish strict routines that he respected, bearing compelling reasons to change. And so it's these excerpts out of his journal, out of his diary, that make this book so interesting and compelling to read because way before, we see his thought processes, his inner monologue, his struggle with depression, his addiction to success and praise from others. We see all of this way before he becomes one of the greatest value investors of all time.

• 6:48David Senra?

  So this is the why and what of his journal, his opinions as a young man on how to achieve greatness. And then he's got a great idea about living your life as if somebody wrote a book about it. It says, "His most natural tendency was to write about investment matters, drawing useful inferences from his reading. Sports and fitness were frequent features, including the competitive instinct and the drive to excel." Warren Buffett's got this great quote that says, "Intensity is the price of excellence." And I think that's something that Peter definitely believed in. "The nature of human love, sexual attraction and sensuality, especially in the context of his personal sexuality, was another preoccupation." It's covered in his journal a lot.

• 7:30David Senra?

  "And he was a critical observer of human behavior and habits." And so now we get into some direct quotes from his journal. It says, "I'm convinced that to achieve real greatness, a person needs above all to have passion, but at the same time immense discipline, concentration, patience, and an unshakable determination to become a master of his craft." He's writing these words at 25 years old. And I would say that's the path that he pursues up until the time that he dies. "Perhaps I anticipate a biography as I watch my own development." And he's talking about the process of writing a daily journal. "If so, I'll need to make something interesting of myself first."

• 8:15David Senra?

  So he was drawn to accounting and to investing. He works in the industry. This is long before, probably about a decade before he starts his own fund. And so he's still trying to figure out, trying to answer a question I think a lot of us ask ourselves from time to time, like, what do I want my work life to be? What do I want to get out of my craft? Right? He says, Peter began to think about what really constitutes job satisfaction and whether for him this meant power, or money, or both, or possibly something entirely different. His early questioning is revealing, now a direct quote from his journal. Do I want my job to become my obsession? I'm not sure. His job, I didn't know that when I highlighted this, it is the single most important thing in his life. He winds up, after much reluctance, does wind up settling down.

• 9:00David Senra?

  He's married for a very long time, but his job comes before. I don't think he ever has any biological kids. He's got two stepkids. But his job becomes before everything else in his life. So he winds up answering this question for himself in the near future. Do I want my job to become my obsession? I'm not sure. What I do know is that I want to do something which will engage my spirit in all of my faculties, my very being. And why should this not be my profession? And this is an entry from Peter's diary when he turned 27 years old. A lot of them are going to be similar to this, where he's documenting his life in

• 9:42David Senra?

  real time, but he also has a fairly critical eye for the things that he needs to fix in his own life. His birthday entry sounded an introspective note. This is direct writing from Peter now. A young man ought to express what he thinks deep down at least once. I believe that the major influences on my life so far have been, and he lists them in bullet points here, this is the first one, the fact that my family, though well-connected, was poor. He was obsessed with becoming wealthy. The next one, I essentially rebelled against parental authority from the time Dad got back from the war. And it got worse when Greer was born. Greer's his younger brother. For, uh, this is the last one. For a while, I became a self-satisfied arrogant snob.

• 10:26David Senra?

  And I was probably unsuccessful with women because of that and not my looks or physique. I changed my physique anyway, and I'm glad of that. But I've also begun to confront the other hangups, especially my relationship with, with my dad. So he's much closer to his mom. His dad's away from the war, comes home as kind of a stranger. Later on, he talks about resenting the fact that he used to have all of his mother's attention. Then his dad comes back, then he has a little brother, and he winds up pulling away from his family. And he thinks later on, after his mom dies, he's, he's writing in his journal, and he's talking about, you know, that was very, she lives well into her 90s. And he said, you know, that was a mistake. I intentionally hurt her because I was hurt.

• 11:09David Senra?

  And then this, this writing about his physique, he was made fun of when he was younger because they called him pudgy or chubby. He becomes completely obsessed with physical fitness. He has a goal in his life to have a below 10% body fat. He runs, he cycles, he does all kinds of strenuous physical activities, even when he's, after he's diagnosed with that rare disorder, where, you know, he can lose his balance. Eventually, he's confined to a wheelchair. It's a, I'll go into more detail about that later on because it's, it's very devastating. But this obsession that we see when he's 27, he carries with him throughout his entire life. He was obsessed with being in the top percentage of fitness levels. He applies this not only to physical fitness, but in his work and almost everything else he does as well.

• 11:54David Senra?

  But he was obsessed with being in the top percentile of physical fitness for, for people his own age. And this is a little bit about his mother from this time period in his, his journal. She's made a huge contribution to my intellectual life, to books and to music, and to the realization of how few people there are who are truly enthralled by the world around them. And now, understanding his life story, he definitely desired to be one of those people who are really taken with the world. She's life is this great experiment, this great adventure. And I think that's something he held his, his entire life. I cannot ima, I can't even begin to convey how much life he fit into the seven decades that he was alive. So let me go back to the sentence.

• 12:33David Senra?

  And to the realization of how few people there are who are truly enthralled by the world around them with the desire to understand it. This awareness, which I owe to her, is deeply enriching. So this is around the time, this, there's another book, it's called There's Always Something To Do. I think the investment, the subtitle is The Investment Philosophy of Peter Cundill. That's more if you want to learn like how he got rich. This is much more of a biography. We hear like highlights, so I'm going to read this sentence. This is his job at the time. He's in, he's in Canada. That's where he's from. Eventually, he's going to relocate and live in London. But he says, "He was appointed Vice President of Yorkshire Financial Corporation, the holding company, general manager of the savings and loan company,

• 13:14David Senra?

  and the treasurer of the trust company, taking on day-to-day supervisory control over 100 million in assets." This is before he starts his own company. That's his job. There's many times I was reading the book, because it's just giving us like the highlights of his professional career. And before he starts his own fund, I was, "What do you actually do? I know your title, but it seems all you do is travel around and meet with people." I mean, I was actually very confused, pre-becoming a founder, what his actual job was. And again, it mostly, the benefit of this book is mostly on seeing the development and reading his inner monologue. This is one of his notes to self that I found was interesting. Just a sentence real quick. "There is a choice of courses in life, either to seek equilibrium

• 13:56David Senra?

  or to enjoy the heights and suffer the depths." He chose that second path. He chose to have, instead of, it's not going to be even keeled, it's going to be high highs and very low lows. And we see more of his inner monologue. He's in his late twenties, almost 30 years old. He says, "I have a real terror of doing a bad job, but this has a positive side effect as a spur to performance. My shyness and awkwardness with things unfamiliar can make me brash and egocentric, and I fear this characteristic too. I think ambition is healthy, but it can also be a corrupting influence which can obscure good intentions. I really want to lead a useful life." It's a really interesting and I think admirable goal.

• 14:41David Senra?

  "To learn, not only to make, but to keep friends and to feel that I am succeeding and filling my life with rich experience at all times. In a way, I do fear for my ability to control my ambition properly, to channel it in a positive direction." So, part of his job is this constant travel. He continues this for most of his life. Towards the end of his life, he's averaging over 100,000 miles traveled per year, very much like a Rolling Stone, a vagabond. I'll get to more of like the unconventional marriage that he has. But this is his inner monologue after he completed an entire trip around the world. And he's 31 years old at this point. So now, this is Chris, the author. He says, "The trip had served to toughen up some of the softer edges of his character,

• 15:26David Senra?

  and this was probably fortunate, given the troubled waters he was about to navigate." So, his mentor, this guy, he almost engaged in like a form of hero worship. The one that was showing him the business winds up going to jail for fraud. And I think I have some more highlights about that in the future. So, that's what Chris means about there's troubled waters ahead. But we're not there yet. This is the inner monologue of Peter after the trip. "You need to get into some situations which makes your gut tight and your balls tingle. I think I can now afford a few hates. I hate people who are imprecise, and I hate those who want to create chaos and mayhem in the world. I believe in change, but measured and controlled. I do see that the establishment needs the avant-garde.

• 16:10David Senra?

  What is brand-new challenges complacency in any way in a consumer society where obsolescence is vital to progress. Only stasis is frightening." That's a great, you could almost summarize his life, like his guiding philosophy. "Stasis is frightening." "I'm looking at the moon." This is right around the moon landing in 1969. I'm looking at the moon with new eyes now and much curiosity. There are going to be incredible changes in the next 40 years of my life. And I look forward to them, whatever they may be. That's very interesting. Let me pause there and I'll go back to, let me interrupt my own self, I guess. It's interesting that he chose that timeframe. The next 40 years of my life, there's going to be incredible changes in the next 40 years of my life.

• 16:52David Senra?

  He lives another 41 years from this, the time he's writing that. So he's almost dead on there. There are going to be incredible changes in the next 40 years of my life. And I look forward to them, whatever they may be. And I hope to have many more high points. Yesterday, sailing in a brisk wind was one. It combined a feeling of mastery of the elements and of man-made materials with an understanding of how they can interrelate. There is a really sensual pleasure in the illusion that one is dominating the sea and chasing the clouds. With some additional spice from the occasional prickle of fear. And I want to draw your attention to this idea, this fear. Peter wants to feel really alive.

• 17:37David Senra?

  And so he goes out and purposely puts himself into dangerous or painful situations. So he can feel, at the time, he's terrified, maybe very, in many cases, very, very uncomfortable. But he does things like he climbs Mount Everest. He goes rappelling down waterfalls. He gets in experimental planes and does all these crazy maneuvers. He goes on another flight that's like zero gravity. He does all these things that many people would be too afraid to do, just because, I think, my interpretation after reading the book, is that he felt alive at that moment. He chased the extremes. He was not comfortable with just the day-to-day monotony of normal life.

• 18:21David Senra?

  So here's another journal entry. This is really, this is Peter on dating in his 30s, on marriage and kids. And we see now that question is like, do I want my work to be my obsession? Is now, he's already realized, yes, I do want that. And I had to be careful because marriage and kids can get in the way of that. So he says, so a girl he was dating breaks up with him because he refuses to get married. So he says, "The loss is painful, and yet I'm doing good professional work. I'm probably better off as a bachelor because my primary ambition is to be a great professional." I'm not sure if I really want children and I'm equally unsure whether I could ever live with just one woman. The thought of domestic life slightly repels me and given my strange set of routines,

• 19:04David Senra?

  how could anyone possibly live with me anyways? And a few journal entries later, he continues that idea. He says, "The reason why I'm still a bachelor is because I often yearn to escape all emotional conflict and just exist on my own." So a cornerstone of Peter's professional life is he was, just like Warren Buffett, he was a student of Benjamin Graham. He believed in the margin of safety. And this is what he thinks of his boss. This is the person he was engaged in a little bit of hero worship right before he starts his own company. Or first he jumps to another company, then he starts his own company. But he says, "After eight years, I'm forced to question whether Treble, that's his boss, has reached the limit of his capabilities.

• 19:47David Senra?

  He now seems more emotional than rational, intellectually quite shallow and incapable of seeing the bigger picture. My own instincts are to make a success of the trust company with investment counseling and mutual fund management as its natural corollary. I cannot see the rationale behind assuming additional risk, which may even be beyond our shareholder mandate. We are not real estate developers and I am not prepared to take corporate or personal financial risks like Treble, who's much more conservative. I am now concerned that the trust company will suffer from this policy by being starved of capital and exposed to potential loss of credibility and reputation should there be any bad investment decisions.

• 20:28David Senra?

  The more I think about this, the more I recognize that reputation and credibility are actually all we have to sell." So he winds up leaving, but he's still tied to Treble and he's concerned, this is right before Treble goes to jail. So he says, "What was really preying on his mind and causing him sleepless nights was his worry about Frank Treble. By early 1972, the worldwide recession that had already precipitated a bear market in equities had begun to affect real estate values right across North America." That's where Treble had a lot of money invested. "Some of Treble's real estate speculations were looking decidedly shaky." He winds up actually... Stealing money from another fund to cover the losses in real estate winds up making the money back.

• 21:13David Senra?

  But even though all the investors were eventually made whole, he went to jail because he stole money that wasn't his. Troubles continuing evasiveness about the mechanics of these operations gave Peter serious concerns about what the real exposure might turn out to be. This is the whole point that I'm reading the section to is because he winds up having a mental breakdown. And again, I think this was what makes the, because, you know, very few people would admit to this, but he's writing these words to himself. It's, you know, decades later that he realizes I'm going to turn these words into, you know, almost an autobiography of sorts. Judging from Troubles' general demeanor, Peter suspected that a serious crisis might be looming. This unquantifiable uncertainty left Peter feeling insecure about his entire professional

• 21:58David Senra?

  life, and he suffered what he called a mini mental breakdown. And later in the book, it talks about, he references, you know, coming close to suicide, which is really surprising, given, you know, to the outside world, he seems like this super smart, super successful, super driven individual that is having all this inner turmoil that he's only sharing with his journal and a few close friends. This part of the book, he starts to start his own fund. He is trying to learn the art of investing, but he doesn't have a philosophy to like lay a foundation down. And this is where first he discovers, he's realizing what is not right before discovering what is. So he sees things being done the wrong way.

• 22:42David Senra?

  He's like, I can eliminate that from contention. And he starts reading, he finds the writings of Benjamin Graham, and he realizes, okay, this is it for me. Peter gradually reached the view that national economic forecasting was scarcely more reliable than corporate. Troubled economies, he observed, normally provided rich pickings for vultures, although he conceded on the macro plane that industry analysis could be useful as an addendum to the detailed study of individual companies. And investors were entitled to be presented with a clear statement of the investment policy to be pursued by the manager. What that ought to be was still eluding him. So he has no investment philosophy of his own, is what that paragraph is saying. However, the breakthrough was not that far off.

• 23:22David Senra?

  When Peter had first joined AGF, the chairman had given him Charles Ellis's book, Institutional Investing. Ellis had suggested that any money manager worth his salt ought to be able to achieve a 35% compound annual rate of return. That's a really high bar, actually. I think at the end of his career, he does 25 years of an average of like 17% compound growth. This was clearly not being achieved by AGF itself, or indeed by any other money manager of whom Peter was familiar. But he was riveted by this statement. He had two previously really successful investments, Bethlehem and this company called Credit Foncier. And so it says, "Both those investments had each surpassed this benchmark."

• 24:06David Senra?

  He was looking for more investment opportunities like that, but he had yet to find them. "With growing frustration, he got into a flight in December 1973, nursing a colossal hangover and clutching a copy of the book, Super Money." And it was written by George Goodman. It was his eureka moment. Goodman devotes-- this is now Peter writing in his journal about how important this book was, because what it led to him. This is an example of this idea that you and I always talk about, the books are original links. So it says, "Goodman devotes Chapter 3 to Benjamin Graham and the Margin of Safety. It struck me like a thunderbolt. There before me was the method, the solid theoretical backup to selecting investments

• 24:49David Senra?

  based on the principle of realizing underlying value. My years of apprenticeship are over." And this is the only time in the entire book where Chris is quoting from Peter's journal that it's in all caps, and this is what Peter's writing to himself. "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life." Goodman was referring to Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's remarkable book, Security Analysis, which we've talked about over and over again. Ton of the founders and investors that we've covered on the podcast also read this book, and it changed the way they looked at the world, which Peter dove into as soon as he finished Goodman. His library contained all six editions, as originally published in 1934 and frequently updated.

• 25:32David Senra?

  Every copy is heavily underlined and annotated, a man after my own heart, showing that he was continually reminding himself of basic principles and evaluating them in the light of contemporary circumstances. So, right around the time he discovers this, he goes out on his own. He sets up, this is the business he's eventually going to sell, this is the one that makes him famous and wealthy. It's called Peter Cundill and Associates. He's used the proceeds of the sale of shares in Yorkshire, the place he used to work, to fund the acquisition. The total consideration was $160,000, and it turned into the best investment he was ever to make. And so, that's what he does. He manages mutual funds, and that's what his entire career was.

• 26:13David Senra?

  Now, this is where he comes up with his own strategy, and then we see his thoughts on how to do it, which is very, very fascinating to see a founder's thoughts at the very beginning of the company. In practical analytical terms, what resulted from Peter's reading of Graham and Dodd and his reflections on their concept was the development of the unique net-net sheet, that's his own term, upon which all his company research was based from then on. He had redefined Graham and Dodd's terminology of current asset value per share as net-net working capital per share, and made it an essential condition of his investment process. The reason I'm reading this, too, is because I think he's did something that is extremely intelligent, which he's constantly reading, constantly searching for new ideas.

• 26:58David Senra?

  He takes in those ideas, and then he adds, he layers on his own thinking. And by doing so, this combination creates something unique. Using the relatively simple methodology, Peter and a small team were able to follow hundreds of companies on an international basis. This is before, he's not working with computers, he's doing this by hand. This collection of sheets was known as the Bible, and Peter took a copy of it with him wherever he traveled. His BMW in Vancouver even sported "Net Net" on its license plate. Peter's journal is a mother lode of pithy examples of his thinking, of his thinking processes in his new situation as a sole manager of a mutual fund. This is so fascinating, he's just got a bunch of random thoughts here. I'm just gonna read them to you.

• 27:42David Senra?

  "Value in an investment is like character in an individual. It stands up better in adversity and overcomes it more readily." The next one. "I have the knowledge and the ability to be a great investor." There's a ton of sentences in there, kind of like hyping him up, telling him, "Hey, you're on the right track, don't fuck it up." This is essentially what he's telling himself. "Now is the moment to put it all into practice with absolute commitment." There's a ton of sentences in his journal like that. "Keep seeking out people who see investment realities as I do. Start to build a network. Do the unappealing things first. Never shirk the detail." Talks about detail over and over and over again. He hates sloppy people, he won't work with them, he finds it disgusting.

• 28:27David Senra?

  "Detail gives the grounding for strategy and keeps the mind clear. Intuition based on experience and instinct is what makes investment an art form. You must always be willing to discuss your failures frankly if you're going to learn from them. Patience needs to be combined with nerve and the determination to go to the brink time and time again. There will be humiliations." Another one. "Once you've done your homework properly and are absolutely convinced that an investment is right, you should not hesitate or wait for others to share the adventure." A lot of the picks were very contrarian. He had to be very comfortable with a lot of people criticizing what he was doing.

• 29:11David Senra?

  "The price at which you start buying will almost invariably be imperfect, but that should never discourage you. The initial price is only important in that it must incorporate your margin of safety." Another one, "You will inevitably have to take losses from time to time, and then you must do it decisively." I think he only had two, if I remember correctly, two down years? I think in 25 years, something like that. "No self-flagellation, just a sober assessment of what we're wrong, and why so that mistake is never repeated." And at the same time that he's laying out the strategy, he goes into another very important aspect of his life, which is, this is him writing, his journal's filled with his thoughts on the importance of being physically fit.

• 29:55David Senra?

  And Peter's favorite subject was history. So he actually uses a lot of, what I found really interesting reading, was he uses a lot of historical examples to supplement his own thinking. I'll get there in one second. So it says, "Apart from his investment procedures, the most important routines in Peter's life were his fitness regimens that he maintained with religious fervor. That he maintained with religious fervor ever since that decision, taken in college, that he would never be chubby again." The journal's full of quotations on the subject, drawn from his wide reading. "However, he has long since achieved his objective of sporting a lean athletic body, and his motive for exercise had gone through a subtle metamorphosis.

• 30:36David Senra?

  For Peter, fitness had become inextricably associated with the high levels of mental agility and endurance, and the maintenance of that elevated pitch of curiosity and awareness that he considered so vital in life." And this is a fantastic way to think about, I think it's a fantastic goal for us to have, but a fantastic way to think about who Peter Cunta was and what was important to him, that I underlined it twice. "Excellence as a goal in and of itself had been drummed into him from early boyhood, particularly by his mother. And he had spent a lot of time considering how it might most effectively be pursued." Now we reached the part of where he's actually writing in his journal about this.

• 31:19David Senra?

  "Both Plato and Aristotle made useful observations about fitness and the pursuit of excellence, and I find myself more and more drawn to their point of view." So now he's gonna do some quotes. Lack of physical activity destroys the naturally good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it. That was Plato. This is now Aristotle. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. That's a great way to think about Peter as well. We do not act rightly because we had virtue or excellence, but rather have those because we've acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

• 32:01David Senra?

  And again, go back to the term, routines and orgies. He wanted a life, a unique life, full with crazy experiences, but he was driven by his routine. A little while later, Peter wrote again. The more that I think about what, the more, the, why can I not read all of a sudden? The more that I think about the way that the Greeks, especially the Spartans, regarded the subject of exercise and the necessity of maintaining peak levels of physical fitness, the more I am convinced that the health of the mind and the spirit are either bolstered or hampered by the condition of the body. So I'm fast forwarding ahead in his life. At this point, he's already been married for quite a while.

• 32:46David Senra?

  And this is him on marriage and family life, which I found was, he's an odd duck, you'll see in a minute. Nevertheless, even as they approached their 10th wedding anniversary, Peter's latent yearning for the complete independence of his old bachelor life could still engender bursts of impatience and frustration. So I think, I picked up, if you read the book, you'll pick up on a theme. He just didn't, he, he wanted money and power, but I think a lot of that had to do because he strove for independence. He didn't like any constraints on his time, didn't like people telling him what to do. And I think having an abundance of money relieves yourself of a lot of, you know, the limits that other people that maybe don't have that money have to endure. But more on this particular journal entry.

• 33:29David Senra?

  On the drive home from Sun Valley, I almost killed us all. Jay, that's his wife, Joanie, she's referred to in his journal as Jay. Jay told me that I drove like a suicidal maniac. An exaggeration, but the dangers of my impatience with the claustrophobic aspects of wedded bliss and family life are real enough. I must never let that happen again. There are other lives at stake and far too many people relying on me now. He's talking about not only his family, but his business. So he continues on what he thinks makes a happy marriage. I think what most characterizes the happy couples that I know is their ability to remain self-reliant on occasion and thereby to de-escalate the grounds for conflict. This implies equality in the relationship and strict adherence to a few maxims. These are great maxims.

• 34:11David Senra?

  Don't lie, don't make promises you can't keep, and above all, don't quit. So the second maxim there, don't lie. I don't know, maybe I missed the part of the book, but I don't know if, did his, he was in some kind of open marriage on his part. I don't know if she ever knew it, if she acknowledged that when he's constantly traveling, he's got women all over the globe. They wanted being married and in love for 25 years, but he did not believe in monogamy. He was very hesitant to give up his bachelorhood. And so I don't, again, I think that's good advice, right? Here's just a few maxims. Don't lie, oh, actually, it's the first maxim, right?

• 34:56David Senra?

  Don't lie, don't make promises you can't keep, and above all, don't quit. So he didn't quit. He made a promise till death do us part. His wife unfortunately dies of cancer a few years before he winds up dying. They stay married the whole time. Divorce was never an option, but he was cheating on her constantly. I just don't know if she knew that or not. Okay, so let's go back to his professional life. Let me give you this brief outline. So in 1974, he starts his fund, right? 20 something years later, he sells his fund to this company called Mackenzie. He keeps like a small percentage, maybe like 5, 10, 15% of the business, something like that, like another eight, nine years later, something like that. He sells the rest of it.

• 35:36David Senra?

  So part of the reason he winds up doing this is because he only likes finding what the investment should be. He doesn't, he wants to outsource all other aspects of the business. So while he's talking about this, and this is before he sells this company. This part, he doesn't explicitly say this, but the note I left myself is a good idea here. Identify the most important activity in your work and then spend all your time doing that. And that's what Peter did. So he says, "The research activity he retained for himself." This is his thoughts on that. "By keeping the primary research function, essentially me, in-house, I'm trying to ensure that my main focus, no less than 80% of my time, is based on identifying investment opportunities for the fund and our other clients."

• 36:19David Senra?

  He feels that's the unique talent that he has. That is his skill set. That's what he needs to be focused on. "The danger in any investment counseling firm is that the principal officer who develops a reputation for sound investment decisions," which Peter did throughout his life, "becomes an administrator and is taken away from his primary role." So he's seeing other mistakes other people make in their career and saying, "Hey, I've identified that and I want to avoid it." Again, just really smart. Okay, so now we're in the early 90s. He's in his 50s and he's suffering from depression. And part of it had to do with his poor performance, temporary poor performance, but I don't think that was, that was, that it's all attributed just to work. I think there's just a midlife crisis going on that is manifesting in depression.

• 37:03David Senra?

  And so this is him on depression. He's got a good, again, some good ideas on how to deal with it and then how to get back on track. So he says, "It was a make or break day which showed me that the spirit can always triumph, although you have to quash the negativity and fatalism with absolute determination and just cling to the positive. I may be feeling better for some of the wrong reasons. The gloom is now pretty much universal, so I'm no longer unique." He's talking about investment returns there. "I feel ready to be creative again. The newspapers were full of the release of Terry Waite." I think maybe how you pronounce the name. This is a really good idea where you're seeing the troubles of other people and how much they can endure and then stepping outside yourself and realizing, hey, if that person

• 37:47David Senra?

  can survive a much more, much more difficult circumstances than I'm in right now, you can draw strength from that. So that's what he's doing with this guy named Terry Waite. He says, "There was the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy, who had been sent to Lebanon to secure the release of four hostages, and then had been captured himself and held for five years. Waite's plight made him see his own situation in a different light." So now this is Peter writing. He was held in a single room, in solitary confinement, without books or writing materials, and under the daily threat of execution. And he passed the test with flying colors. What a perspective for me. We all have to pass through the fire if we are able to progress, and for some, it is

• 38:32David Senra?

  worse than others. "My chemistry has changed." He's talking about, I think he's turned the corner now. "I'm ready to face the world again. Either this business will be taken away from me voluntarily or involuntarily, or I shall rebuild it." He chooses the latter, right? "What drove me to the verge of suicide." These are crazy words. When you figure his dad attempted suicide after the crash of 87, tried to jump out the window. His grandfather, who was at one time rich, and then wound up being a speculator and losing the family fortune, he turned into a drunk, and they said he fell out of a window when he was inebriated. He might have jumped, though.

• 39:16David Senra?

  And so this could be a multiple-generation, you know, this being drawn to suicide. So he says, "What drove me to the verge of suicide was not really the ebb and flow of the investment business with its daily measurement. That I can cope with, but I had begun to see myself as burnt out, and I felt the waning of support and confidence right at the top of my organization." So not only was he beating himself up, but he felt he was losing the confidence of the people around him. So this is part of the way he got out of that. He says, "In my endeavors to get my mind back working in top gear, I believe that I needed to improve in the following ways: reducing procrastination, concentrating with absolute clarity on one thing at a time."

• 39:58David Senra?

  So he just feels he was pulled in too many different directions, didn't have the time nor the mental faculties to actually concentrate and do a good job. "However, it is essential to be aware that procrastination and indecision are not the same things as measuring one's response and allowing sufficient time to elapse for a good decision to emerge." So he's identifying his weaknesses, but he's also saying, "Hey, there's danger here if I take it too far, and I still need to be patient and making sure I'm making thorough decisions."

• 40:27David Senra?

  Okay, now we got to a part, one of my favorite parts of the journal. And this is his quirky philosophy. I think I just called him an odd duck. He's definitely an odd person, a unique person, interesting way to look at things. There is a, he thought later in life, because there's not much known about the disease he had, other than they think that, one, that you're born with it and so you suffer for it, even if you don't have symptoms throughout your entire life. But it could also, there's a, there's a large overlap with people that have it, that wind up being extremely high achievers. They have almost like a singular focus, like they consider, almost like they're on the autism spectrum.

• 41:06David Senra?

  And so, the reason I bring that up is because a lot of, you know, he's a compulsive note taker. He reads a lot. He thinks about things constantly. And so, this computation that I think may be going on in his brain, that may not be so common as going on everybody else's, leads to this difference in philosophy and opinion in the way he conducts his life. Conducts his life, rather. So anyways, this is his quirky philosophy. Says he used the notebooks as a means of gradually, gradually enunciating his own quirky philosophy, which is a unique amalgam, I can never pronounce that word, of the, combination, of the Stoic and the Epicurean. So this is all, I'm gonna, the next section's pretty long. It's just a bullet pope. It's just a bunch of bullet points.

• 41:50David Senra?

  And it's, he titled this entry, "Pete's Tips for Good Life." There's a lot of interesting things here. Exercise between half an hour and two hours every day. Do more on Saturdays. Take one day off every two months. Keep your body fat at less than 10%. Don't be afraid of eating junk food, but eat lots of fruit as well. If you choose to eat fat-free yogurt, make sure you complement this with plenty of hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries. Sleep a lot. Read even more. Drink alcohol two days a week, and once in a while, to excess. Cigarettes are bad. Cigars after a meal are good. Be curious. Never stop learning.

• 42:34David Senra?

  Once a year, run a marathon. Once a year, do something that scares the shit out of you. A bungee jump, the Cresta Run, whitewater rafting. Laugh a lot, but be reflective. Strive for balance through contradictions. Remember that part about being a walking, I'm gonna add the part, walking contradiction for the very end. Be a warrior, be a priest, be a monk, be a hedonist. Reason and passion go together, but not reason before passion. Rotate between daydreaming and acute awareness. Do reality checks and focus on detail. Think positive thoughts even when you're lying to yourself.

• 43:17David Senra?

  The brain doesn't know the difference. Seek balance through harmonizing the different aspects of life. Physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual. The physical world is an illusion, but deal with it as if it were real. At every moment in all societies, contradictions are developing, and these inevitably lead to discontinuities. In his book, Beyond the Mexi...Mexico Bay? Aldous Huxley wrote, "Life is a series of routines punctuated by orgies. It is and it should be, and neither Huxley nor I mean it in the purely conventional sense."

• 44:00David Senra?

  The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca said a lot of useful things. Here are a few. Happiness is balance. To teach is also to learn. Knowing is better than remembering. We are born unequal. We die equal. To govern is to serve, not to rule." That's the end of the quote from Seneca. Be passionate but avoid zealotry. Be politically correct. Be a bubba. Use Bill Clinton as a role model. Wear sackcloth and enjoy pain. Lead an opulent lifestyle. Those are a series of contradictions there, right? Own a house. Enjoy hotel rooms. Travel to extremes.

• 44:45David Senra?

  Consider each resting place a sanctuary and a home. Strive for high levels of awareness. Enjoy brain moments. Be responsible, but remember that the ultimate freedom is the utter absence of obligation." Wow, that sentence hits really hard now that I've finished the book. "Ultimate freedom is the utter absence of obligation." I think that's sort of what he was seeking out. Be highly principled, but be flexible and above all, fair. Be optimistic or be pessimistic, but above all, be realistic. Seek order. Confront chaos. Retreat from the maelstrom.

• 45:25David Senra?

  Be open, but you can keep a few dark secrets. Be a historian. Be a prophet. Be deductive. Be inductive. The stock market is almost always wrong. Once in a while, it is right. God is infinity. Don't question any further. This is an absolute truth. Don't own a car. Ride a bike. Use the subway. Hire limos. Remember that in life, one is both a participant and an observer. That's good. Study systems and financial statements. Remember, though, that the beauty of numbers can delude.

• 46:08David Senra?

  Be intuitive, warm and fuzzy in your analysis. Understanding relationships is as important in investment matters as financial analysis. And the last one. Be humble, but believe in yourself. There's no way you're gonna read this book and think that this guy's humble. So I want to draw your attention to this, his inner monologue. This is after he sells his business. They wind up, the company he sells to is really good at marketing, really good at sales, so they wind up getting a ton of, ton more money, like billions and billions and billions of dollars more into the funds that Peter's gonna be running. So it says, "Peter wrote a cautionary note to self." And we're gonna see, you know, this, at this point, this is what, 1998?

• 46:52David Senra?

  So he's 60 years old? And we see a lot of, this echoes the inner monologue and the notes to self he was leaving, the younger version of himself. So it says, "You now have all the elements that it takes to reach the very top. You have what it takes to be rich and famous. You have what it takes to be a leader of men." This is like his own, his own hype man here, right? "You have what it takes, full stop. Just remember to balance all this taking with some giving. You have what it takes to be exceedingly generous." As an anecdote to the, this is really, this is what I mean about being an odd duck. "As an anecdote to the negative thoughts, which still occasionally uproot from that

• 47:34David Senra?

  old Pete Cunhild, I have created an optimistic character in the form of Frank Cunhild." That's his dad's name, interesting enough. So he's got these two versions of himself, right? And they're characters of his own creation. He takes over most, this is the optimistic Frank character. "He takes over most of the time, except in the early morning, when Pete is too strong." Pete and Frank debate from time to time, with the realist acting as an arbitrator. I wonder whether the superimposing of a good, healthy persona over a flawed one is a psychiatric trick that is known and in use. In any event, this is rebirth time. I am being pushed to do new things.

• 48:16David Senra?

  It is a time of high adventure that will probably be accompanied by some turbulence. See, there's that ups and downs. He doesn't want the even keel. 21 years ago, I founded the business on a hope and a prayer. Now we begin again. Okay, so at this point in his life, everything is going well. And then, as so happens in life sometimes, it takes drastic turns for the worse. And this is when unexpectedly, his wife of 25 years is diagnosed with cancer and given a very short-term time to live.

• 48:52David Senra?

  A visit to the doctor, while he was there, reiterated after some tests that Peter was indeed in peak condition. Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you. For several years up until this point, he had shakes, like his hand would tremor. And he kept going to the doctor over and over again. They'd run all kinds of tests. They're like, no, you're in perfect health. You have the organs of a 30-year-old man. You're fine. It's just benign, over and over and over again. Eventually, he gets a fifth, sixth, seventh opinion, something like that. And they find this rare genetic disorder. But, so that's what this means. It says he was indeed in peak position and his tremor was benign. But Joni soon called to say that she had a test done at a doctor and it had picked

• 49:32David Senra?

  up a one-inch lump on her liver, and that the blood tests were threatening. This is Peter writing. "Then my life changed. Joni said that her blood tests and scans showed that she has lots of cancer, the same as her mother. She is scared." So now I'm going to read over several pages of this playing out in his life. "I'm trying to think of alternative scenarios. Jay will play it straight. It all depends on the severity of the cancer. She continues to lose weight. Soon we shall have a judgment. For the first time, I am frightened for her." Four days later, she had the result. The oncologist says she has nine to 12 months to live. The only good thing is that she will probably not have chemo, radiation, or surgery, and she'll lead a normal life. I wonder. She's in shock.

• 50:18David Senra?

  Now, here's where it gets really weird. She's given the diagnosis for nine to 12 months to live. He's still, again, he's set for life at this point. He still decides, he knows his wife has only a short time left and he's still going out and traveling all over the world for work obligations. He's seeing other lovers. This is not, again, I don't doubt that he loved her in his own way. Like he, whatever, I think his definition would be different than most people. But it was very bizarre, reading the section. So, right now, he's, he's on a, I forgot where he's at. He's in Toronto and he's on like a late night on the town with a bunch of friends. It says, "Later, I thought of Jay. My marriage is unconventionally conventional. She is my rock and my anchor.

• 51:03David Senra?

  My angst is because I fear that I'm about to, I'm about to be set loose. I have a desperate sense of malaise. I asked her whether she ever gets scared. She always says she's determined to beat it. I brought up potential nursing care and her will. Later, she called me and suggested I loosen up and not panic. That's rather unfair. We're in uncharted waters. She feels she can extend her life. Oh, how I hope so." Now, going back to the writing of Chris. By mid-November, he was in Hong Kong and just recovering from a spirited evening out with old friends when he received a heartbreaking call. Jay was in the hospital, having undergone major surgery on her colon. I arranged to leave Hong Kong early and get to Vancouver to be with her.

• 51:47David Senra?

  On the long flight, Peter marshaled his thoughts, trying to accept the idea that Joni's death was inevitable and likely soon. Now, this is his writing. "I think that you can lose your fear of death by acknowledging that you are already dying from the moment you emerge from your mother's womb. Your body is a form that has no permanence. I find that I can only deal with the prospect of Jay's passing by sticking to all my routines as far as possible, reprehensible as some would feel this is." I'm glad he said that, because around the time when I'm reading this, like, this is, dude, this is... Snot behavior I'd think I'd be engaged in. Like if my wife was dying from cancer, this is terrible. Unlikely as it seemed, Joanie was strong enough to return home and a week later, she was walking on her own.

• 52:32David Senra?

  Once again, Peter felt he could leave to attend to the Board of Governors meeting in Toronto. On a plane, a passage from Roy Thompson's autobiography, "After I Was Sixty," is the name of the book, caught his eyes. I actually put this book, I might order it, I just found it actually. This is a direct quote from the book. "After sixty, I'd always been, I always had a restless feeling, a suspicion that I might be stagnating. Being a widower and my children settled, I would have retired to loneliness. In any case, life was too exciting to retire. The brain," this is the most important part, I think, and the part that I think stuck out to Peter. "The brain is like a very sophisticated computer. My advice is to allow it to work, as it were, unattended.

• 53:14David Senra?

  It will use your bank of experience and reach lateral conclusions and otherwise obscure connections intuitively. Intuition, emotion, and intelligence are inextricably linked." That's the end of the quote. He was struggling. "I'm going through a personal maelstrom, using the notebook to even out, use the notebook to even out your feelings. Be aware of the unity of mind, body, and spirit. Keep to the process. Have measured responses. Try to find a degree of meaning in Jay's illness. Be never-ending curious." We see the advice that he's giving himself trying to go through what has got to be one of life's worst experiences. So now he's with Jay, this is right before she dies.

• 53:57David Senra?

  "I spent several hours giggling with Jay before I faded, although there were some serious and memorable moments. I told her how she had taken care of me. She said I had given her a wonderful life. I shall treasure the exchange. She wants to stay with the pain rather than give in." During the night, Joni awoke frightened of the wind. Peter held her tightly until she slept again. She awoke very anxious, and Peter held her hand for five hours as she slipped into a coma. In her coma, Jay caressed my face, which was wet with tears, and my body was throbbing. This is right before she dies. He's at the hospital with her two kids. She had two kids from her previous marriage, Roger and Evelyn. So Roger said that the death process had begun.

• 54:42David Senra?

  It was not pretty. We took turns betting, uh, excuse me, we took turns being on vigil. Was she frightened? Was she in pain? Or was she determined? Evelyn and I needed some time away. We were in the exercise room when Roger rushed in to say that she had died. We worked on the details of her death. I did love her, and I'm happy I told her so with utmost conviction. So she dies. He's 64 at the time. He doesn't know it at the time, but he's, he's got eight more years left of life. But those are not, those are eight severely compromised years. He does the most he can with them, but his illness progresses and gets worse and worse and worse.

• 55:25David Senra?

  And so we spend some time on that because it's just devastating. This is his thoughts as his illness progressed. My balance is unreliable. I sometimes suffer extreme fatigue. My strength is slipping away, enough that I notice it from week to week. I've always needed a lot of sleep. I now find solace in sleep, which I never did until now, except in periods of depression. And I'm now, and I am not depressed. I have continued my routines. Sometimes I struggle to keep up with them. There seems to be some clear alternatives. Fight or give up? I know the answer. Spend or save? This is a different question. I do not want to deprive myself of the fruits of my labors, but at the same time, I want

• 56:09David Senra?

  to leave a material legacy. There must be a balance in this, there must be a balance in this. Retirement is simply a death warrant. Hang on, you're still contributing strategically. Do not look back. Look forward.

• 56:27David Senra?

  So as his illness gets worse and worse, he becomes temporarily somewhat reclusive. This is where, even though he's friends with the author, Chris, for 30 years, they hadn't seen each other in a while. As Peter understands that his days are numbered, right? So he starts deciding, hey, I'm going to work on this book. And just like at the beginning, Chris said, you know, it would have been an autobiography if he could have survived. So this is, they're now meeting up and the author, Chris, has not seen Peter in some time and he's taken aback at the drastic physical change. This is a horrifying disease. It takes somebody that was extremely strong and active and destroys the physical body to almost nothing's left. I had not actually seen him for over two years.

• 57:11David Senra?

  When the lunch date was arranged, she had warned me that I would see a big physical change in him, but nothing she could have said would have prepared me adequately. As I was ushered into the hall, I could see through to the master bedroom where Peter was standing next to the window. I was speechless. The contrast with the lithe athletic figure I had last encountered in whom the only signs of illness was the merest tremor of his left hand was so extreme that I was on the verge of tears. Peter caught sight of me and began to walk unsteadily toward me in welcome. Fixing me with those startling blue eyes and patting my head, he said, "It's all right, Chris. Take a deep breath.

• 57:54David Senra?

  It's not as bad as it looks." Unfortunately, it was. So this is very unique. Now is the book unique because you have, you know, 40 years of daily journal entries. But then in this book, they spent a good amount of time on the process of writing the book, which I found really interesting. So it's going to be a joint affair. Then we turned our attention to the journals, of which there are nearly 300, going back to 1963, all handwritten. How crazy is that? I realized that the material was original, frank, and quite eccentric and that the venture was actually going to be fun. Our routines soon became established. After reading the day's papers and periodicals,

• 58:39David Senra?

  Peter stretched out on the bed beside my desk to assess what had been done and what needed doing. I quickly discovered that there was nothing at all wrong with his memory. During his morning nap, and he put that in quotation marks, he frequently opened his eyes to comment or to add some information demonstrating that he'd been thinking rather than sleeping.

• 59:00David Senra?

  Then we had lunch together, usually finger food, which Peter could still manage to eat on his own.

• 59:06David Senra?

  Between mouthfuls, I would read what I had transcribed in the last 24 hours. As Peter put it in an extraordinary way, it enabled him to relive his wonderful life. And that is, again, I do think Peter, he had this fierce sense of independence. Because you always see, like, if you interview people right before they're dying, and one of the main regrets that people have in life is that they didn't live a life that was unique or authentic to them. They just did what others around them expected them, or maybe copied other people without thinking about it. And so, that thing, that, looking back, he knows he's about to die, and he's saying, "I had a wonderful life." Oh, that is so valuable, because I think it's so rare.

• 59:50David Senra?

  What I suspect, and I don't have any way to quantify this other than just intuition, is I suspect that it's extremely rare in our species. And it's part of the reason why I'm reading all these books and trying to learn as much as possible, because I want to avoid the fate of regret of living a life that is not authentic to myself. I want to look back towards the end of my life and be able to say what Peter is saying here. "I had a wonderful life." And in his case, yeah, it sucks. I didn't want this disease, but I didn't have control over it. And the parts of my life I did have control over, I made great. And I just think that's, it's very inspiring to me. For me, this exercise was invaluable because the readings often prompted him to explain or expand on his journal.

• 1:00:33David Senra?

  Revisiting the youthful Peter Cundill was often very funny, and laughter echoed around the apartment as it had not done in a while. "Routines and orgies" was Peter's chosen title, taken from a rather obscure travel book by Aldous Huxley. He had read it, and at the highly, excuse me, he had read it at that highly impressionable age when a young man knows what an orgy is and is ardently hoping one will come his way. The full sentence actually reads, "The commonest, one might call it the natural rhythm of human life, is routine punctuated by orgies." I know I'm just repeating this again because I read this at the beginning. And now, towards the end, we see what he meant by it. Huxley goes on to make it quite clear

• 1:01:18David Senra?

  that he is not necessarily referring to orgies in the Roman sense. That's a polite way to put it. "Peter told me that he had no intention of implying that either." And the process of writing the book goes up until he dies. Chris is with him, interacting with him, and talking to him, and traveling with him, up until he dies. He's actually holding his hand. I think he's one of the people in the room holding his hand as he passes away. And it's devastating. Before I get to that part so you understand how debilitating this illness that Peter had to suffer through was. He's got, his last advice that he ever gave came in this last interview he ever did. And you could even characterize this

• 1:02:02David Senra?

  as his first and last advice. And it's advice that he was able to adhere to for his whole life. In his last interview, Peter's advice for regular investors is quoted as follows. "The mantra is patience, patience, and more patience. Think long term and remember that the big rewards accrue with compound annual rates of return." And so, the last year of his life, he doesn't know it's the last year of his life. It drops off, falls off very quickly towards the end. But he didn't, even though he couldn't take care of himself, what I'm about to read to you, you'll see, like, you know, he had to wear diapers. He was drooling. He couldn't feed himself.

• 1:02:46David Senra?

  It's not a way anybody wants to spend their last time. Peter did what he could. He wound up going to the theater like 30 different times. He traveled to Egypt, went to all these different countries. He tried to push life and fill it with as many experiences as possible, right up to the very, very end. And this is one of the last few trips that he's ever able to take. And it's a business trip to Bermuda, working with the company. And he takes an ex-girlfriend with him. And she's a former stand-up comic, and she writes about the experience. And I think this is the perfect way to close.

• 1:03:20David Senra?

  This time, Peter had decided to ask Phyllis Ellis to come to act as his companion. Her account of this visit to Bermuda is touching and funny, but it gives a stark picture of the realities of Peter's condition, also the realities of the final few months to years of his life. Only his indomitable spirit could have held him together and still made it possible, against all the odds, to live life and enjoy it in the face of an apparently overwhelming and humiliating disability. This is Phyllis's account. Peter placed his regular Sunday check-in call, surprising me with an invitation to Bermuda. Of course I would go. I always took the opportunity to see him.

• 1:04:04David Senra?

  In many ways, I had become his go-to girl, a friend, confidant, and jester. Long gone were the days when lover was part of that equation, which suited me perfectly. But I remained a constant in his life, and I was excited to see him. The trip was an odd and fractured comedy of errors. Peter immediately rejected the hired nurse. He demanded that I take over the role of caregiver, chief bottle washer, changer of diapers, showerer and shaver, feeder of vanilla ice cream, wiper of drool, TV channel surfer,

• 1:04:44David Senra?

  Kindle operator, and dresser, basically his full-time nurse. He was almost completely incapacitated, shaking beyond belief, weak and frail. Not doing well physically, that's how he described it to her before he saw her, had been a gross understatement. And yes, if he choked, there was a battery-powered machine to prevent him from, well, choking. Wonderful. I had already dropped all soaking six feet of him as he stumbled out of the shower. He couldn't support himself, slipping through my arms like a wet fish and missing a serious head injury on the porcelain by inches. He just burst into laughter, and then so did I.

• 1:05:30David Senra?

  Crisis averted for the moment. My next nursery duty was mastering the electric pump apparatus. This is the apparatus that stops him from choking. Directions: Remove from hard case. Quickly shove rubber pipe down the throat, hoping not to puncture anything, and then press on. And of course, at dinner, he did choke, turning blue. With the directions in my hand and out of my mind for fear that I might perforate his esophagus, I rushed the procedure and cleared his throat, but succeeded in suctioning his entire bottom lip into the tube of the machine.

• 1:06:11David Senra?

  Unfortunately, how to pry bottom lip from tube was not in the instructions. A wonderful reason why Bermuda was a perfect place for Peter was the weather, and he loved our daily swims. About midweek, we struggled to the pool, him refusing his wheelchair, to begin what he called his laps, walking in circles at the shallow end. Having been a great sportswoman myself, I took pleasure in the notion that although he couldn't walk, and was beginning to find speech more difficult, and could no longer dance, he still wanted to do what he was calling his workout. That morning was no different.

• 1:06:53David Senra?

  I was in the lead, almost running on the spot, almost running on the spot slowly in the water with Peter pulling up the rear. There were a couple pretty women sitting in the sun, and I noticed him paddling with a little more purpose than the day before. Funny how pretty women motivated him. With my back to Peter and the pretty women, I heard a loud scream. As I turned around, Peter was gone. I looked down, and there he was, still paddling his arms, but at the bottom of the pool. This part made me laugh, not because of that, although that that image, that mental image popped in my mind, but what he says here. I dived down, pulled him up, dragged him to the side of the pool.

• 1:07:37David Senra?

  After his choking subsided, I asked him furiously, what the hell he thought he was doing? Was he trying to give me a heart attack? He grinned and whispered with a crooked smile. The backstroke. And this is in in her account is when she turns serious, though. I can make light of my week with Peter in Bermuda, but it wasn't really funny. Not really funny at all. He was a shadow of himself, no less selfish or demanding, but somehow childlike in his utter dependency, almost like an infant. He hated being like it, but he tried to make the best of it. I hated it, too.

• 1:08:19David Senra?

  Not the idea of helping my dearest friend, or reading to him, or rubbing his back when he shook himself to sleep. That part was hard to read. But the idea that I was alone and responsible for him. And though I tell the story with humor, on a couple of occasions, the near misses could have been fatal. You could have died, I said, as I sat on the floor with him after he smashed into the corner of the bureau. He smiled, a trickle of blood rolling from his forehead, and said, well, my dear, well, my dear, you were missing the point. At least I would have been with you. I'm not sure loved ones should be the responsible person, especially when someone is so compromised. Of course you'll do it. You'll do anything for them.

• 1:09:03David Senra?

  But as the shadows circle and the end is inevitable, the time together might be more meaningfully spent in sharing stories, memories, and love, and having someone else do the chores. But not so fast. This is Peter Cundill we're talking about. A man who could move mountains in his professional life, but also a man who had the emotional intelligence of a spoiled child having a temper tantrum. But that's who he was. A wonderful dichotomy.

• 1:09:37David Senra?

  And that is where I'll leave it. To get the full story, read the book. If you buy the book, use and leave the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That's 160 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.