As the last few grains trickle through this year’s hourglass, many of us are plotting a course for the new year. Here at Canadian Family Offices, we thought it was a propitious time to highlight some remarkable bucket lists in the hope of inspiring others to think big as well.
What types of life goals do people set when money is no object?
Once people attain a certain level of wealth, “their imagination is free to play, and that allows any number of things,” says Toronto-based money coach Kelly Willis Green, host of the Serious Coin podcast.
Travel is front and centre in many people’s plans, trending toward adventure and risk-taking in wealthier circles.
“People talk about the interesting things they’re doing, what they’re passionate about, and these out-of-the-ordinary trips,” says Willis Green. She equates the urge for collecting experiences to collecting books or sports memorabilia: “It’s probably the same itch that’s scratched, but within a different context.”
The young may dream of the future, but the urge to draw up a true bucket list tends to come with a certain level of achievement, says Thane Stenner, the Vancouver-based senior portfolio manager and wealth advisor with Stenner Wealth Partners+ at CG Wealth Management.
“When most business owners have a liquidity event, that’s when they start to think about their bucket list, because they’ve sold their baby,” he says.
“They really become quite reflective.”
Read on for our roundup of remarkable life goals.
A matter of course
Every year, Golf Magazine publishes a list of the world’s top 100 golf courses, and Tom Woods is playing them all.
A retired executive of CIBC and Wood Gundy who sits on a number of corporate and charitable boards, Woods fell in love with the sport while caddying in his youth, and naturally played on business trips. In 2011, he was invited to play the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament and one of the most prestigious clubs in the world.
With Augusta under his belt, he realized he had already played about half of the top 100, so over the next 15 years, he played four or five a year. Now he’s on No. 99, with one South African course yet to play. “We’re going to have a little party down there,” he says.
Woods says the attraction of the challenge was meeting people. Whether it was New York or New Zealand, “it was golf, and golfers share a bond.”
Big ideas, little dreams
Jean-Louis Brenninkmeijer and his family originally moved from Belgium to Oakville, Ont., for what was supposed to be a two-year assignment. Instead, he’s still here 25 years later, spearheading a unique tribute to his adopted country.
Brenninkmeijer, a member of the enterprising family behind the European global clothing empire C&A, is the founder and chief visionary of Little Canada, an HO-scale model of Canada in downtown Toronto. It was born after he unpacked a collection of model trains that had been in storage for many years and conceived an idea something like the European model-railroad layouts he had toured as a child, but for Canada, “because Canada has so much to celebrate that most Canadians don’t even know.”
He partnered with the head of a local model railroad club in 2012, finally opening Little Canada in 2021. With sophisticated technological input from a youthful building team, it has become “a place where we evoke a sense of wonder about the country,” Brenninkmeijer says. “It has certainly brought me satisfaction, personal fulfillment, purpose and pride.”
Building futures for at-risk kids
Greig Clark is the chairman of Trails Youth Initiatives in Toronto, which imbues at-risk young people with skills and confidence. He is best known, however, as the founder of College Pro Painters, which had 500 franchisees nationwide at its height.
On his current bucket list are such items as performing on guitar in public and playing hockey in the future with his granddaughter (who’s currently 3 years old). Since reading Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People some three decades ago, Clark has written a personal mission statement that he revises every New Year’s Day.
“The main goal is to help as many people as I can and maximize their potential,” he says. “When what you’re doing in your job and in your life overlaps, then that’s nirvana.”
He makes a weekly plan and reviews it nightly using index cards to keep track of daily activities and record how each one forwards his mission.
“Time is my scarce resource,” he says. The mission and annual review help him allocate his time, “but the real discipline comes in the daily and the weekly plans. The trick is to live it every day.”
Faster, higher, stronger
The next steps in Jeremy Logan’s life plan include competing in an Ironman 70.3 triathlon and ascending “another” summit. The founding designer of men’s clothing maker Easy Mondays, based in Toronto, had already run five marathons when he decided to climb Africa’s highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, with two friends in 2023.
“What I realized afterward was how much I loved the training program and the preparation for an event,” he says. “I also loved the challenge and stepping out of my comfort zone.”
In 2024, he competed in an Olympic distance triathlon. Despite rigorous preparation, he didn’t meet his target performance, so he doubled down on the training and entered another race in Montreal three months later.
“I beat my last time by over an hour. It was incredibly rewarding,” he says. These wins are the kind of “high” that he wants to continue to experience, “whether in business or life.”
World travel
Brad Meiers, vice chair of capital markets for Portfolio HiWay Inc., and his wife, Jacqui Szeto, vice president for investment programs at Canso Investment Counsel Ltd., have ambitious travel goals, including visiting every continent. Australia is last on the list, after their recent visit to Antarctica.
They aspire “to spend more time seeing other parts of the world, to be part of what’s going on in the world,” Meiers says. The couple’s travel goals relate to their decision almost 20 years ago to adopt a daughter from China. “We have a full and fortunate life, and we wanted to share it with someone,” he adds.
“Despite some of the problems that Canada is going through, it’s the best country in the world. We’re very fortunate to live in this country, and one of the things I want to do, rather than be on the sidelines, is to be helpful in making sure that Canada remains one of the best countries in the world to live in.”
Health comes first
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are trying to extend the human lifespan, but that’s not the aspiration of Michael Nguyen, owner of the luxe men’s clothiers Garrison Bespoke in Toronto.
He is instead focusing on what he calls our “health span,” not our lifespan.
“One thing is your metrics, your biological age versus your chronological age,” he says. “I find ‘health span’ is a very relevant subject at the moment. There’s the surgery space; we call it longevity tourism, and you see celebrities online post about their score with a full-body MRI.” (Nguyen was planning to give MRIs to his family for Christmas.)
Complementing his efforts, Nguyen has founded Longevity House, a health club focused on extending its members’ health span.
“What better thing to invest in than your health?” he asks. “We have a public healthcare system, which is phenomenal, but you don’t just eat one cuisine in the world.”
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