For aspiring cricketer Ed Smith, luck was for other people. Like his childhood hero, Geoff Boycott, the tough, flinty Yorkshire man, the young Ed knew that the successful cricketer made his own luck by an application of will power, elimination of error, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. But when a freak accident prematurely ended Ed Smith's international cricketing career, it changed everything—and prompted him to look anew at his own life through the prism of luck.

Tracing the history of the concepts of luck and fortune, destiny and fate, from the ancient Greeks to the present day—in religion, in banking, in politics—Ed Smith argues that the question of luck versus skill is as pertinent today as it ever has been.

Ed Smith taught in schools all over Newfoundland, finally settling in Springdale, where he and his wife, Marion, had lived. He had been a high school principal, an assistant superintendent of education, and principal of a college campus in Springdale. Ed retired in 1996, just over two years before a car accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. He began writing a humour column for the local newspaper in 1980. Other papers soon began running the column, “The View from Here” and it appeared in six papers and magazines. He had been nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award for humour and had written for the Toronto Star and Reader's Digest. In 2001 Ed prepared a series of short radio clips on life with quadriplegia, which he wrote and presented on CBC radio. These earned him The Canadian Nurses' Association award for excellence in broadcasting and an international Gabriel award for writing that upholds and uplifts the human spirit. Ed has been recognized by the Atlantic Community Newspapers Association for hilarious material. Five collections of his columns have also been published. Ed Smith, along his wife, had four children and six grandchildren. Ed Smith passed away on September 8, 2017 in Grand Falls-Windsor, NL.

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