To whom it may concern...

Commentary by Jeff Burgar

I’ve come to learn there are only three ways you can get to what I call rich. Just three ways. The first way is luck. Win the lottery. Inherit a pile of cash or land. In so many cases in business or investing today, just be in the right place at the right time. Be lucky. Very, very hard to do. You can buy lottery tickets every week like I do, and never hit anything. Don’t count on luck. The second is talent. You can be the dumbest blonde on the block, but if you have the talent to look good, people will want to hang clothes on you and pay you fortunes to take your picture. You might be a hockey star. Or be able to sing or write songs. Talent can take you a long, long ways. Do you have enough of it? Being smart isn’t a way to get rich. I know too many who were smart as a whip. Good friends of mine. One of the brightest young people I knew froze to death in Edmonton, drunk, sleeping on a sidewalk while people stepped over him. Just being smart doesn’t work. Hard work? Truthfully, I know too many people who worked hard all their lives and have little money to show for it. They are rich in spirit, in friends and relatives, and have fulfilling lives. But, big cash just never happened. They didn’t quite have that combination of hard work, talent and luck that is needed. Not their fault. It just didn’t happen. So, the third way to get rich is like robbing a bank. You don’t have to be a crook though. The third way is probably the easiest way to make money anybody ever invented. It’s honest. It doesn’t need luck. It doesnt need talent. And don’t tell anybody, but you really don’t have to be that smart. I didn’t know that back when when I was your age. I sure know it now. If only I had really, really known how easy it would be compared to everything else. If only somebody had drilled it into me, over and over and over again. Go to school. Get the most education you can afford - and get some more. Beg or borrow, whatever you need, but get your degrees, your paperwork, your trade certificates, whatever it is on the path you decide, get the most schooling you can possibly get. I can’t give you a 100 per cent guarantee everything else in life will fall naturally into place. But I can assure you, its like having a dealer keep giving you aces - your odds to live a successful, happy, life, where you can support your family, your children, help out your relatives and friends and others less fortunate when they need it, the chances of all the good things in life, and I don’t mean just the toys, but all the other good things happening to you improve dramatically, dramatically when you have an education. Do yourself the biggest favour you will ever do for yourself. You will discover in the long run it will give you the ability to be a very unselfish and giving person. Get the best education and the best paper you can get your hands on. (The above is a condensed version of a recent speech given to the High Prairie St. Andrews Grade 12 Graduation Class by Burgar)