Ron Heale: the wildest accountant I ever knew.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: PRESIDENT'S NOTE

Iy friend died a few weeks ago battling for life the way he lived it: full throttle.

I met Ron in the fall of 1973. I was the editor of the Manitoulin Expositor. I didn't know anyone in Sudbury and needed an accountant. Someone recommended Ron.

The occasion was the investigation of a fledgling weekly newspaper newly named Northern Life. It was losing a quarter of a million dollars a year and was owned by a couple of fellas who owned a carpet company, The House of Broadloom in Sudbury. One of the partners was sick of losing money and had offered me a huge discount on some carpet for a building I owned in Little Current if I would take the newspaper off his hands. I was interested.

Ron was in Elliot Lake doing an audit but said he would meet me at the newspaper office on Friday night. After five hours of poring over the books Ron laughed and said, "This is ridiculous." In fact, it was so funny, he called his friend Rennie Mastin and told him to meet us at the Coulson Hotel for a wee dram. The paper was losing its shirt, hadn't paid its taxes in months, and didn't seem able to collect the money it was owed.

As drinks stoked our ambition, I explained to these fellas all I knew about making money in the newspaper business. It wasn't much. I was 25. By one in the morning we were co-adventurers, modestly inebriated and ready to go. With their participation came others and we were off to the races.

Well, not quite. A month later. I had lost virtually all of the invested capital and things looked bleak. Ron had cleaned up the books and delivered papers with his station wagon, but came up one day to our office at the corner of Elm and Durham and said. "I'm moving to Espanola. You can have my shares. They are worthless." Ron was not one for sugarcoating.

A week later, the Sudbury Star went on strike and we were working round the clock turning advertisers away. Ron remained my accountant for nearly 40 years.

Before we ran out of money, Ron took me to one of his special bankers to see if we could borrow some money. The day we arrived, his friend, the manager, was out so we met with the assistant, a man named Armond. He sat at a desk inside a little oak fence attached to the manager's office. We had drawn up some beautiful cash flow charts and entered this financial emporium...