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Alexander Mackenzie was a Scot who discovered the Mackenzie River in the Canadian Arctic and was the first European to cross North America north of Mexico.

Name: Sir Alexander Mackenzie

Birth Date: 1762 – March 1820

Job Functions: Scottish Explorer, Fur Trader, and Businessman

Fields: Business and Exploration

Known For: First European to cross North America north of Mexico

Alexander Mackenzie was born near Stornoway on Lewis Island to a prominent military family. Upon the death of his mother, his father took him to New York in 1774 when he was 12 years old. During the American Revolution, his father, a loyalist, joined forces loyal to the King of England and died during the revolution. As the Americans gained strength and the war turned against England, the Mackenzie family moved to Montreal, Canada in 1776.

Mackenzie attended school briefly, and in 1779, he was employed to work as a clerk in one of the main Montreal fur-trading companies, Gregory and McLeod. He remained there for five years and in 1784 went to Detroit as a trader for the company. June 1785, Mackenzie was chosen to head the region of the Churchill River, with headquarters at Ile-a-la-Crosse in what is now northern Saskatchewan. At Ile-a-la-Crosse, Mackenzie managed a trading territory which stretched from Lake Athabasca to the Great Slave Lake and the upper regions of the Churchill River. Shortly after, Mackenzie and his cousin Roderick established Fort Chipewyan on the shores of Lake Athabasca.

Control of the Churchill allowed the Native American trappers to do business with the North West Company rather than having to travel hundreds of miles further down the river to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company at Prince of Wales Fort. In 1787, Mackenzie’s firm merged with the larger North West Company.

At the time, the North West Company and the Hudson Bay Company were the two key trading companies in Canada. The Hudson Bay Company was doing business from outposts along the shores of the bay, and the North West Company had established trading posts in the country’s interior where Native Americans trapped furs and exchanged them for manufactured European goods and rum.

When the two companies merged, Mackenzie was now working with trader Peter Pond who had widely explored the Canadian interior. Over the years, Pond had gathered a lot of information from the Native Americans who he traded with, and he now had a general idea of the river system of the Canadian northwest.

“[Pond] learned of a large river (the Slave) that flowed into Great Slave Lake from the south and of a second river that flowed out of the western end of the lake and flowed to the Arctic. About this time, Pond became aware of the discoveries of Captain James Cook who had found Cook Inlet on the south coast of Alaska. Pond then came up with the theory that the river that flowed out of the Great Slave Lake flowed westward into Cook Inlet rather than north. If so, this would provide the much-sought-after route to the Pacific.”

Pond retired in 1788, a year after the merger, and Mackenzie was left to test the trader’s ideas through exploration. The North West Company wanted to expand its knowledge base on western Canada’s geography, and the various Native American tribes who inhabited it. To succeed in the lucrative fur trade, it was essential that traders be familiar with not only the land in which they trapped and transported animal skins, but also the relationships that traders fostered with the tribes that they traded with.

On June 3, 1789, Mackenzie set off in canoes on his exploration with a large party of traders and Native Americans from Fort Chipewyan in what is now far-northern Alberta. Included on this exploration was Nestabeck, a member of the Chipewyan tribe, who had previously guided Samuel Hearne on his historic overland trip to the Arctic Ocean along the Coppermine River.

Mackenzie and his team were hoping to discover a passage westward by way of a river, described to him by the Indians, which flowed out of Great Slave Lake. Travel was slow at first because of the large number of rapids on the Slave River. Once they entered the river flowing out of the lake – which has since been named the Mackenzie River after Alexander Mackenzie – the expedition covered approximately 75 miles a day and reached the river’s outlet to the Arctic Ocean on July 14, 1789. The team stayed for four days on an island in the Arctic Ocean before they embarked on the return trip to Fort Chipewyan.

Though Mackenzie discovered one of the world’s greatest rivers, he was very disappointed because it was of no practical use to traders. He decided that he would embark on another expedition to determine if he could find another route. Mackenzie spent the next three years on company business. In the winter of 1791-1792, Mackenzie went to London to learn more about navigation and surveying so that he could make more accurate measurements of locations. He studied longitude calculations and collected instruments. Mackenzie returned to Canada with a supply of rudimentary measuring instruments that he was to put to good use.

In the fall of 1792, Mackenzie met with his cousin Roderick to plan his second and greatest expedition. On October 10, 1792, Mackenzie set off on his second great expedition from Fort Chipewyan for the Pacific coast of Canada. He hoped that he would make contact with Russian traders to establish a trading route across Canada to the Far East. Unlike the Spanish and Portuguese explorers who wanted to get rid of the Russians, Mackenzie thought they could act as intermediaries in the lucrative Pacific trade with China.

This time, Mackenzie travelled west up the Peace River as far as its juncture with the Smoky River where he established Fort Fork. While on the expedition, Mackenzie stopped at trading posts along the way and traded rum and tobacco for furs and information. Before crossing the Continental Divide and beginning the descent to the ocean, the expedition was met by members of a western tribe that offered guidance in reaching the Pacific in hopes of establishing a trading relationship with the North West Company.

Mackenzie spent the winter to have an early start in the spring. Mackenzie set out again on May 9, 1793 with six voyageurs and began his quest for the Pacific again. After crossing the mountains, the party descended along the Fraser River for 150 miles and traveled overland to the Pacific coast of what is now British Columbia. This expedition and the voyage down the Mackenzie River combined to form the first crossing of North America above Mexico by a European.

Mackenzie found no Russian or Spanish traders, but instead Native Americans who were hostile to the Europeans. Mackenzie took a defensive position on a small island off the coast where he traded with non-hostile Native Americans who approached them.

On the morning of June 22, Mackenzie painted a simple inscription on a large rock in Dean Channel: “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, July 22, 1793.” It is preserved today in a provincial park. Mackenzie started his return on July 23 and reached Fort Chipewyan onAugust 24, 1793.

Following the winter of 1793-1794, which he spent in Fort Chipewyan, Mackenzie headed back east with big ideas about uniting the two largest fur-trading companies, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company, and together they would cooperate with the East India Company to open a new trade route to China. He continued to advocate these ideas for years although they never materialized in quite that form. On his return to Montreal, Mackenzie became a director of a trading company and traveled every year to the annual meeting in Grand Portage until he retired and left for England in November 1799.

Mackenzie wrote and published the account of his expeditions –which he titled Voyages from Montreal Through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793 Vol. I – in December 1801 in England. He re-entered the fur trade, first in competition with his old company and then again as a member of it, but his interest was waning. He was knighted in 1802. In 1805 he was elected as a member of the Lower Canada Assembly. Three years later he returned to Scotland. He married a girl of 14 (he was 48) in 1812 and died on his estate on March 12, 1820.

Alexander Mackenzie’s Steps to Success

• In the years before the first trip north, Mackenzie gathered essential information about the geography of northern Canada from the tribes that came to trade at the newly established Fort Chipewyan.
• On his second trip, Mackenzie took a plan outlined by officials at the Northwest Company five years earlier, Mackenzie set out to make contact with the Russian, Spanish, and newly independent American traders conducting business on the Pacific coast of what is now British Columbia.
• Went to London to learn more about navigation and surveying so that he could make more accurate measurements of locations. He studied longitude calculations and collected instruments.
• Mackenzie was very persistent in his endeavors.

Why Alexander Mackenzie’s Contribution Matters

Alexander Mackenzie was an explorer who contributed greatly to his field. He also documented his travels in a book so that others may read about his experiences.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Works Cited/Referenced

Science an Its Times, Volume 4, pages 19 – 21, 71

Science an Its Times, Volume 5

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Explorers & Discoverers of the World

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) is a play which was published in 1912. In Greek Mythology, Pygmalion is the name of a gifted sculptor who falls in love with one of his masterpieces, which he names Galatea. The interesting thing about this myth, is that for some reason, Pygmalion despised women, and vowed that he would never marry. He placed all his time and effort into his craft.

Now back to his sculpture Galatea that he falls in love with, he has outdone himself this time. Galatea is the most beautiful sculpture he has ever created. I guess in his mind, Galatea possesses the qualities that he never saw in real women. Pygmalion is so enamoured with his creation that he wants her to become his wife. The sculptor prays to the Goddess Aphrodite, imploring her to transform his masterpiece into a real woman, and guess what? she grants him his wish. Galatea and Pygmalion marry with Aphrodite’s blessing. Nothing like a good love story!

Later, the word Pygmalion evolved to mean, “A man who “shapes” an uncultivated woman into an educated creature.” In Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins is Pygmalion and Cockney Eliza Doolittle is Galatea.

Many authors of literary classics wrote as a response to the social injustices they observed in society. According to Wikipedia, “Nearly all his [Shaw] writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege…. He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively.”

George Bernard Shaw date between 1900-1910 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The play starts out with the key characters seeking shelter from the rain under the portico of St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden. The mother and daughter are waiting for her son Freddy to return with a taxi. Freddy is not portrayed in a very good light, he is seen as very spineless. A flower girl appears and is trying to sell flowers to the people under the shelter. She is very uncultured and speaks cockney. A gentleman comes out of the rain under the shelter and the flower girl tries to sell him flowers. All during this time, you have who is called a note taker, who is writing down what he is hearing.

The flower girl becomes very upset because she thinks he is a copper. There is much debate about whether or not he is a copper because of the appearance of his shoes. The note taker accurately guesses where people are from based on their speech patterns. The rain stops falling and people vacate the shelter except for the flower girl, the note taker and the gentleman.

We learn that the note taker is none other than Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins, and the gentleman is Colonel Pickering. It so happens that both men are interested in each other’s work and had plans to meet other which was unknown to each. Higgins claims that with the work he has done in his study of phonetics and the science of speech, he can make anyone more refined. The men exchange addresses, but Pickering suggests that they get together for supper.

While they are leaving, the flower girl is still trying to sell her ware. Higgins is very condescending and rebukes her. However the church clock strikes at that moment, and he is feeling like a Pharisees, so he throws a handful of coins into her flower basket.

The next morning, the flower girl takes a cab to visit Higgins because she wants to become more refined, and she is using the money he dumped into her flower basket the previous day to pay for her lessons. Pickering is present when the flower girl appears. We soon learn that her name is Eliza Doolittle. Higgins is very unconventional and has no tolerance for high society and doesn’t follow their rules. He can also be viewed as being very curt, and some might say a bully.

After much back and forthing between Higgins and the sassy Eliza, he decides to take her on as a project. The outcome is that in a few months time, the flower girl will become so refined in her speech, manner and dress that she is able to fool the other guests at a garden tea party into thinking that she is a woman of class.

Higgins asks his housekeeper Mrs Pearce to bathe Eliza and get her some new clothes. While that is going on, Eliza’s father Albert Doolittle shows up and demands money for his daughter, but he does so under the guise of asking for the return of his daughter. Higgins pays Doolittle five pounds.

As the play unfolds, you see Eliza blossoming and becoming more refined. One day Higgins and Pickering decide to take Eliza to visit Mrs Higgins to get her impressions of Eliza, but they want to pave the way first. Higgins’ mother is a very refined, stately, and well-to-do woman in her sixties. Mrs Higgins views their experiment as idiocy. During the visit, the mother and daughter who were under the portico while it was raining, also visit Mrs Higgins. We later learn that they are Mrs Eynsford Hill, Clara Hill. Higgins signals Eliza to come into the parlour, and with a gesture, which the others do not see, lets her know which of the two older ladies is his mother.

Mother and daughter do not recognize Eliza as the flower girl they previously met because she has changed so much.

With much effort and hard work and the determination on the part of Eliza, the experiment is a huge success, and Eliza pulls it off at the garden tea party. She passes for a woman of refinement and means. The problem is that Pickering and Higgins didn’t think beyond that outcome. They didn’t think about what would become of Eliza after the experiment. They took her for granted and probably thought that she would continue to live with them, after all she is their creation. They never quite defined what Eliza’s role is in their lives.

The last third of the story is simply amazing with dialogue between Eliza and Higgins. She is exceedingly upset with him and hurls his slippers at him, but he doesn’t get it. He calls her a presumptuous insect, and she calls him a selfish brute. At one point in their conversation Eliza says, “What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What’s to become of me?”

Higgins’ response, “Oh, that’s what worrying you, is it? I shouldn’t bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won’t have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn’t realized that you were going away. You might marry you know. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed bachelors like me and the Colonel….” And the description of the nonverbal communication that’s going on is priceless.

The next morning, Pickering and Higgins go to his mother’s home because they cannot find Eliza. Mrs Higgins tells them that they are like children. Eliza is there and she eventually speaks to them. There is a lot more conversation between them and much is centered around what Eliza will do next. It’s worthy to note that as it is with the Pygmalion myth, Higgins also does not like women, and the reader doesn’t know why. He too is proud of his creation.

Higgins says, “I’ll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?”

Eliza responds, “I wouldn’t marry you if you asked me; and you’re closer my age than what he is.”

What does the foolish Higgins do at that point, he corrects her grammar and she tells him she will talk as she likes. Eliza lets Higgins know that Freddy has been writing to her and that the he is in love with her. Higgins views Freddy as a fool. In this story, Galatea does not wed her Pygmalion. “Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was not coquetting: she was announcing a well-thought out decision.”

Eliza marries Freddy and they struggle to make ends meet. Pickering solves the problem by helping Eliza to establish her own flower shop. Freddy isn’t very good at business and Pickering has to explain to him what a cheque book and bank account mean. The two still struggle financially. But, Eliza always makes the most of the opportunities given her. Eliza and Freddy attend night school, learning bookkeeping, shorthand, typing and taking polytechnic classes. They also take classes at the London School of Economics, but they are not learning about the flower business. After a while, business starts to improve and they are able to take care of themselves.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw highlights the complexity of human relationships, and the interaction between classes. One of the biggest lessons is from Eliza and it is if you keep on elevating and making yourself better in life, it’s virtually impossible to return to the way you were. My Fair Lady [Blu-ray] is an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.

I recommend Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw because it’s an excellent play and the reader cannot help but enjoy it while learning many lessons. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

CAUTION: Do not watch the film in lieu of reading the book because film adaptations are usually not exactly like the book.

PYGMALION (1938) – Full Movie – Captioned

Cannot view this video? Click here. Uploaded by dcmpnad on Nov 4, 2010

My Fair Lady -Horse race scene

Cannot view this video, click here. Uploaded by sandynr20 on Aug 17, 2008

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: HG Wells’ The War of the World, John Maynard Keynes, Economist, and Joann Lim, Making It Happen Specialist and Professional Coach.

H.G. Wells (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Adventures in Learning

This is a guest post by Carlo Pandian who gives a unique look at the new world of the businessman.

Is the Traditional Businessman Dead? 

Booked for Mentoring

HG Wells’ The War of the World is an invasion story. However, it’s an invasion by beings from another planet. It is about interplanetary warfare and is written in a journalistic style. The names of newspapers are mentioned in the context of journalists reporting the invasion of the Martians.

Mentor Yourself: Book Review – The War of the Worlds by HG Wells 

Wisdom of Life Profile

John Maynard Keynes was a brilliant and outspoken economist. “[He] was educated at the finest British schools, Eton and then King’s College, Cambridge, becoming in his youth a part of the Bloomsbury Group, which consisted of a dozen privileged aesthetes, including Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Clive Bell.” When he was in his mid-thirties, Keynes married a ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, and they remained together until his death from a heart attack on Easter Sunday, April 21, 1946.

Mentor Yourself: John Maynard Keynes, British Economist Who Revolutionized Economic Theory and Policy 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Making It Happen Specialist and Professional Coach Joann Lim. Joann Lim has lived a lot in her young life and is a ray of hope for others. Here are Part I and Part II of Joann Lim’s interview.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

“No matter how much it rains, or how much it pours, the sun will always shine again. It may not be today or it may not be tomorrow, but it will shine.” Joann Lim

Invisible Mentor: Joann Lim, Making It Happen Specialist & Professional Coach

Company Name: Big Picture Fine Focus

Website: http://www.bigpicturefinefocus.com/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Joann Lim:  I’m a connoisseur of life and a make-it-happen specialist. I’m a lover of all things food and world travel.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Joann Lim: It varies which I’m very blessed about. Usually the consistent things are I wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 am. I have an hour of me-time which could be anything from reading, workout, and breakfast with champions. The day is filled with meetings of greatness, conversations with clients, creative and sometimes a lot of prep for workshops and keynotes.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Joann Lim:  Between every 30 and 90 days, I create inspiration boards with pictures, sayings, anything that will pull my vision forward to help me focus on my big picture. To stay motivated, I surround myself with amazing people. I have an amazing dream team, whose expertise elevate and enhance what I do. I read a lot, and I do a lot of what I call exploration walks where I go to a different city, and kind of wander around and see what happens. It’s usually when we are in a free space that the most inspirational things come to us.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Joann Lim:  The beauty is everything happens in its place and in its time, so I wouldn’t necessarily change anything. But I think what I would definitely go back into is being less afraid. What I would do is come at my dreams and come at my days with more fervor, more passion, more courage, and identify my fears and let them go more quickly.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Joann Lim: The biggest discovery I have made is what faith actually is. Growing up as a Christian, you are told so much about having faith in a Higher Being and faith in God, and so the word just seems to become a regular thing. But I don’t think it was until the last year or so that I actually understood what that meant. Trusting in something you don’t see is using the invisible to make sense of the visible, and talking about things that are not tangible – what courage is, what love is, what belief is. Those are things that are internal yet they help us make sense of everything that goes on around us, to bring meaning to our relationships, our work and our lives. And those are the things that inspire and help me to move forward. So that’s the greatest gift I have learned over the last year.

Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Joann Lim: The biggest threats to my business and my success would be from myself – my fears, self-doubt, and complacency. I call them the happiness robbers that I write about on my blog. Usually these things, these voices, these powers within us that try to rob us of our own potential and our own happiness, and I think it’s about being aware, that’s what it is to identify them, to ask ourselves why, and then ask how it’s benefitting me by listening to my fear, by listening to that voice that tells you you’re not good enough, will it allow me to move forward and live the life I was created to live. I think that’s one of the biggest things I have taken from this fear, and it’s something that I constantly work on. It doesn’t leave you, if anything you become a master of overcoming these happiness robbers.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Joann Lim: I help people live rock star lives. By rock “starness” I mean the life they want to live, the life they would love to live, something they envision for themselves. There are so many people out there that are living the same old, same old, just cause. I help people in organizations live because, to live with intention, to have impact, to have inspiration and influence and to know at the end of the day when they are taking their last breath, they can be okay, they have no regrets, and they say, “It was a life well-lived.”

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Joann Lim: The biggest challenge I have ever faced happened in my third year of university. It was exam time around November, December. I was faced with the third death in three consecutive years, and what I realized at that point, was that I hadn’t gotten over the first one. My life spiralled. My grandmother passed away and she was in Singapore at the time. I had to make a choice, would I go to see her the days leading up to her death, or would I continue schooling. It played big on me because I always said that I would put family first. People come before anything else. In that moment in time, I chose to continue my education. I battled with that, and I think it was one of those moments when I realized that that was what she wanted for me. No matter how hard it was not to see this person, that’s what she wanted, and it was a matter of what I wanted to do or honouring the wishes of somebody else.

In this time in my life, my life spiralled, and my family was out of the country. I was kind of alone, and I really went to a rough place. I felt like I lost control of my whole life, but what I realize was that no matter how much it rains, or how much it pours, the sun will always shine again. It may not be today or it may not be tomorrow, but it will shine. Holding up the hope that the sun will shine metaphorically was something that pulled me forward, and it was about taking one day at a time, focusing on the things that I could do, and making those things happen. What I learned is the resilience of human beings, what it meant to ask for help, what it meant to feel vulnerable, and it showed me that there may be darkness in our lives, but it’s the light that pulls us forward. Sometimes we need that little glimmer of hope that will allow us to come through our darkest days.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Joann Lim: My biggest break came in 2007, and it happened on April 4^th. It was the death of probably the most important person in my life, my hero, my inspiration – my everything. She is my aunt, my closest friend. She had the mentality of a five year old, she had breast cancer, lost her sight, was hard of hearing, and for the years before that, my life was about her. I didn’t travel long distances because I was afraid of being apart from her. I didn’t pursue the things I wanted because I wanted to be close to her. And the minute she passed away, no matter how sad and devastated I was, it was like she said, “For a time that you took care of me, now let me take care of you.” In that moment, I was free to pursue the life that I truly wanted. Within months, I packed my bags and I was off to Europe on my own adventure. Ever since then it has been one blessing after another of seeing, embracing and experiencing the true beauty of life. It is in her that I am in great gratitude for her life, for her inspiration, and for giving me this greatest gift.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Joann Lim:  One of my biggest failures was not being able to take a project that I was deeply passionate about to the next level. I was given a great gift of becoming a Director of Events for a large conference event. As we progressed, I started to see the challenges of being a part of a large organization, and building it from the ground up. Despite the many successes to it, it was at that moment when I realized it was more than me. I realized that I wasn’t the person for it, as much as I loved the potential for where it’s going, I’m not that person for it. It taught me to let go, it challenged me to say, “How much do you believe in it, and does it matter who gets the credit?” And I think it was at the point when I asked does it matter who gets the credit, and when my answer was “No,” I realized that whatever happens in my life, I’m not attached to it, it’s okay. And when you truly believe in something, you want the best for it, and that sometimes mean letting go.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Joann Lim:  It happened in my third year at university, and it was forfeiting my third year to go to see my grandmother around the world, or to staying where I was. That brought into play my values, what I believed in, what I believed was right and wrong, the character of who I was and who I am. The impact is that (a) I didn’t get to say a formal goodbye to my grandmother and (b) honouring a wish that she wanted for me, even though it may have gone against what I would have chosen for myself. Knowing what someone wants for you is something that I hold sacred. The impact is that I wouldn’t be where I am today if that choice was different. Who knows where I would be? Everything happens for a reason, and there is a place and time for everything. For her and for her wishes, I’m grateful.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Joann Lim:

1. Being on the many farm vacations that I did as a child. By age six I had gone on three farm vacations, so my parents instilling at a young age the value and power of meaningful experiences – the value of curiosity, imagination and the willingness to try something new.
2. My aunt’s life and legacy. Spending the last couple of years with her so intimately, and even those quiet moments in her room holding her hand, even though she couldn’t see me, I know that she could see me with her heart. That was really powerful. Her death for me was one of the most inspiring, devastating, but empowering event in my life.
3. When I came to know love. I went through a life wondering if I would ever fall in love, will I ever meet that person that I can share my life with, who I could bring out the best in, and who could bring out the best in me, in every element in life. For many years, it looked like that was never going to happen, I dated Mr Wrong to Mr Wrong, and it was okay, but I always wondered until that day, when I met that man who really transformed me. He showed me the true meaning of unconditional love. He showed me what it means to let somebody else take care of you, and what true partnership is. I learn from him every day and he inspires me. And I know that this is an event that has transformed me, and had a significant impact on my life – is finding true love.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Joann Lim:  Going to Europe. I think that was the kick starter to me living a life that I truly loved. I made a choice that if my aunt was here in July 2007 I wouldn’t travel, but if she wasn’t here, I would let no one and nothing stop me from doing something that I love. She passed away on April 4, 2007, one month before my 25^th birthday. And it was a month later that I booked my trip to travel solo to Europe.  That was a transformation in my life because it showed to me and others that I was serious about it, that I could take the risk. I was risking not having a job, not having an income, not having anyone to travel with, but doing it on my own. I think that’s something that’s so powerful when we take a vision and transform it into reality – anything is possible.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Joann Lim:  Mentors influenced my life heavily. They inspire me, empower me, they raise me up when I feel weak, they give me courage in times of fear, and they pave a pathway. They help elevate who I am, and believe in me when I don’t believe in myself as much as I should.

One of my mentors, he says that, “For any successful person that you value, they started somewhere, and to remember this, everyone starts somewhere.” We all choose where we’re going to start. That was very powerful for me to know that no matter what, no matter where people are in their life, no matter what they’re doing, no matter so amazing they seem, how brilliant their lives appear to be, it’s a matter that they chose to start.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Joann Lim: One message is the power of starting, and I think one of the other messages is don’t give up. One of my mentors drills that into me all the time when I see her. It’s the idea that when people believe in you and believe in what you’re capable of doing, there is a power in saying, “don’t give up, keep going, keep persisting, keep believing and incredibleness will happen.”

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Joann Lim:  What I’d invite them to think about is, “You matter!” You matter, your life matters, your choices matter, your actions matter, your attitude matters, and it’s in that capacity that we embrace the idea that we matter. The things we do in life become more intentional, have more meaning, they’re more inspiring, more empowering. It’s in the roles that we matter that we can transform the lives we are living into the lives we love, and in turn become a community of dream makers, not only for ourselves but for others.

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John Maynard Keynes was a brilliant and outspoken economist. “[He] was educated at the finest British schools, Eton and then King’s College, Cambridge, becoming in his youth a part of the Bloomsbury Group, which consisted of a dozen privileged aesthetes, including Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Clive Bell.” When he was in his mid-thirties, Keynes married a ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, and they remained together until his death from a heart attack on Easter Sunday, April 21, 1946.

Cover via Amazon

Name: John Maynard Keynes

Birth Date: June 1883 – April 1946

Job Functions: Economist

Fields: Economic Theory

Known For: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money; Helped to Establish the International Monetary Fund

John Maynard Keynes was the son of John Neville Keynes, registrar of the University of Cambridge and a brilliant logician and economist. Keynes was educated at Eton and King’s College Cambridge and began his career as a public servant. From 1906 to 1909, he was assigned to the India Office where he acquired a sound understanding of the government service. In 1909, Keynes was elected as fellow of King’s College and returned to Cambridge. In 1911, he was appointed editor of the prestigious Economic Journal, the publication of the Royal Economic Society, duties he carried out outstandingly until 1945.

When World War I started, Keynes held an unpaid position at the Treasury and was then made assistant secretary where he managed financing for the war. Keynes was the key Treasury representative at the signing of the Peace Treaty in Versailles in 1919. He felt that reparation demands by Germany was unreasonable and believed that Britain should not return to the prewar gold standard system. Keynes was ignored so he resigned that year and voiced his objections in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which subsequently substantiated his position.

Keynes returned to King’s College where he held the position of second bursar. In 1921, he published A Treatise On Probability, and a year later, A Revision of the Treaty, and a sequel to The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in 1923, he produced A Tract on Monetary Reform (Great Minds Series). In 1924, Keynes became first bursar, a position he held until his death in 1946. In that position, Keynes exhibited superb management, which made King’s College exceedingly rich.

In 1930, Keynes published a two-volume work, Treatise On Money V2: The Applied Theory Of Money (1930), but his seminal work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which revolutionized economic theory appeared in 1936. This book is primarily a theoretical study rather than a practical policy document. Two main ideas make up Keynes’ theory:

1. Concept of Unemployment Equilibrium: Deficiencies in aggregate demand could cause the economy to settle into equilibria in unemployed labour.
2. Radical or Nonprobabilistic Uncertainty: Rational behaviour was based on factors other than calculable forecasts, therefore leading to suboptimal levels of private investment and aggregate demand.

At the time, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was the most influential economic work since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and the most influential in the twentieth century. According to Andrew Taylor in Books That Changed The World: The 50 Most Influential Books in Human History, “The traditional [economic] view was that governments should not try to intervene in the working of the financial markets, but the crisis of the First World War and the misery of poverty, unemployment and worldwide economic slump that followed led Keynes to consider ways in which taxation and adjustments to the supply of money in circulation might mitigate the effects in economic recession.”

At the onset of World War II in 1940, Keynes returned to public service as adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he was soon after elected to the Court of the Bank of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Keynes of Tilton in 1942. In the closing days of the war, Keynes played a major role in negotiating the United States loan to Great Britain, and in the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

John Maynard Keynes was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury, London throughout the 20th century. Other members were Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, Giles Lytton Strachey, Thoby Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s brother), Vanessa Stephen Bell, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Desmond MacCarthy, Leonard Woolf, Mary MacCarthy, Adrian Stephen, Dora Carrington and Saxon Sydney-Turney.

For many years, Keynes collected fine art and rare books. He collected the writings of Sir Isaac Newton. In his later years, Keynes became a patron of the theatre, and in 1932, he became treasurer of Carmago Society, and in 1936 he founded and financed the Cambridge Arts Theatre.

John Maynard Keynes’ Steps to Success

• Actively participated in debates that occurred throughout the 1920s and 1930s among British economists such as D. H. Robertson, Richard F. Kahn, R. G. Hawtrey, and Joan Robinson.
• Accepted a position despite lack of experience. “In 1911 he was chosen, in spite of his youth and inexperience, as editor of the Economic Journal, the publication of the Royal Economic Society and one of the leading professional journals.”
• Wrote and offer advice on public economic issues.
• Throughout his life Keynes occupied a variety of influential posts.
• He had a range of jobs within the area of finance and economic theory to broaden his experience: Public servant, lecturer in economics, fellow of King’s College, editor of Economic Journal, assistant secretary at the Treasury, bursar at King’s College, treasurer of Carmago Society and was instrumental in designing and establishing the International Monetary System.
• During World War II (1939–1945), Keynes advised both English Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt.
• John Maynard Keynes was knighted in 1942 – 1^st Baron of Tilton.
• One of the key players in revolutionizing modern thought on the workings of the free-trade marketplace and modern industrial capitalism.
• Keynes’ ideas informed a generation of economic thinkers and made him the best-known economist of the twentieth century.

Why John Maynard Keynes Contribution Matters

• His book, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, not only revolutionized economic theory, but also had a direct impact on the lives of a large proportion of the world’s population.
• “Unlike most economists before him, Keynes analyzed problems in the economy as if they were arithmetic and not social. He had little use for ideas that glorified either the businessman or the common worker.” Another differentiator is that Keynes advocated for the government to spend money in an economic downturn to stimulate the economy, while other economists and business leaders wanted the government to tighten its belt.

Lessons from John Maynard Keynes

• Stand up for what you believe in: At the signing of the Peace Treaty in Versailles in 1919, Keynes felt that reparation demands by Germany was unreasonable and believed that Britain should not return to the prewar gold standard system. He was ignored so he resigned that year and voiced his objections in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
• Broaden you experience by working in a variety of paid and non-paid positions. Volunteer roles are a good way to broaden your experience.

Additional Reading

An Open Letter to President Roosevelt from John Maynard Keynes

Mr President: spend, spend, spend, The Guardian

Obama’s stimulus plan must include science By David Gross and Eric Kandel

Sources of Works Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of Philosophy

New Dictionary of Scientific Biography

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

American Decades: Primary Sources 1930 -1939

Books that Changed the World, Andrew Taylor

Encyclopedia of the Great Depression

Encyclopedia of European Social History

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.