established institutions to high financial rewards and social
status. Practitioners of natural medicine are not awarded equally
high status, rarely do we become wealthy, and often, naturopaths
arrive at their profession rather late in life after following the
tangled web of their own inner light. So I think it is worth a few
pages to explain how I came to practice a dangerous profession and
why I have accepted the daily risks of police prosecution and civil
liability without possibility of insurance.

Sometimes it seems to me that I began this lifetime powerfully
predisposed to heal others. So, just for childhood warm-ups I was
born into a family that would be much in need of my help. As I've
always disliked an easy win, to make rendering that help even more
difficult, I decided to be the youngest child, with two older
brothers.

A pair of big, capable brothers might have guided and shielded me.
But my life did not work out that way. The younger of my two
brothers, three years ahead of me, was born with many health
problems. He was weak, small, always ill, and in need of protection
from other children, who are generally rough and cruel. My father
abandoned our family shortly after I was born; it fell to my mother
to work to help support us. Before I was adolescent my older brother
left home to pursue a career in the Canadian Air Force.

Though I was the youngest, I was by far the healthiest.
Consequently, I had to pretty much raise myself while my single
mother struggled to earn a living in rural western Canada. This
circumstance probably reinforced my constitutional predilection for
independent thought and action. Early on I started to protect my