Random Excess: The Wild Ride of Michael Cowpland and Corel

The high-tech world is known for its overnight successes and its equally spectacular failures. It can be a rollercoaster business environment that keeps investment analysts on their toes and company executives scrambling simply to maintain their positions in the market. It's a wild ride and no one enjoys it more than Canada's Michael Cowpland. Brilliant innovator and iconoclastic businessman, Cowpland has made billions, has helped dozens of his employees become millionaires but has also seen his businesses collapse and his fortunes evaporate, apparently without regret. Cowpland is a born gambler, a man of excesses, both personal and professional, a maverick who seems to be addicted to highfliers and a flamboyant lifestyle that has made him and his young wife Marlen the closest thing to Hollywood that Ottawa has ever seen.

Ross Laver was born in Ottawa and educated at Carleton University. He has been a journalist for twenty-one years, working for The Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail and, since 1984, Maclean's. Over the years he has been the magazine's European Correspondent, Parliamentary Bureau Chief, National Editor, Foreign Editor and Business Editor. In 1993, Laver co-authored Savage Messiah, an investigative expose of a murderous cult leader, published in Canada and Germany. He is now an Assistant Managing Editor of Maclean's and writes a biweekly business column.