“If someone is reading this story, and they’re in an unhealthy relationship, and they are feeling, ‘Maybe I am going through the same thing,’ I really want them to understand that getting out on your own and being independent is the very first step that you have to take.”

A few hours before dawn on April 17, 2010, Kenneth Irving, a favoured son in Canada’s third-wealthiest family, and the CEO of a multibillion-dollar energy empire, sat at the kitchen table in his forest-framed mansion outside Saint John. His wife and two youngest daughters were sleeping upstairs. From the windows of his house, he could see the grand sweep of the Kennebecasis River and the pine trees that he liked to plant in the mornings before heading off to Irving Oil, to take his place in the onetime office of his storied grandfather, K.C. Irving. By every standard, Kenneth knew he was a lucky man. And yet, alone in the dark, all he felt was anger and despair.  Read the rest of this article at The Globe and Mail…