New Year - New Hope || Port Alberni Investment Advisor

For some people a new year brings new hope, new visions, new ideas and new ways of doing things.  The origin of new year’s resolutions goes as far back as the ancient Babylonians who made promises to their gods at the start of each year.  The Romans also made promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.  At the end of the Great Depression, about a quarter of the population of adults in Canada and the United States made New Year’s resolutions.  Here are some inspirational thoughts about bringing in the new year.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. G. K. Chesterton

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. Benjamin Franklin

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
Hal Borland 

Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. Oprah Winfrey

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true. Alfred Lord Tennyson

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" 

Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits. Author Unknown

A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. Author Unknown

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. John Selden

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. Edith Lovejoy Pierce

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.
Ellen Goodman

As 2013 begins to unfold, let's remind ourselves that the most important thing is that life is beautiful, and we must make the most of each and every day.  Here are some photos of the beauty of the West Coast at this snowy time of year.

Photos by Stirling Images Photography