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Tom Buchanan, chief executive officer of Calgary-based Provident Energy Trust, describes himself as a pretty mellow hockey dad.

But three days after the government made the surprise announcement that it would tax income trusts like regular corporations, he found himself shouting from the stands at his son's hockey game.

He later realized his outburst was less about what was happening on the ice and more about his deep anger over Ottawa's bombshell.

"I almost went over the glass," Mr. Buchanan recalled, still sounding surprised. "The stress levels are high."

Longer hours, cancelled meetings, tense phone calls and a whole lot of stress have become the new realities of life for CEOs of income trusts in the nearly three weeks since they were floored by the Conservative government's Oct. 31 announcement to reverse its campaign promise not to tax trusts.

"We have 200,000 unitholders and 600 employees looking to me for answers," Mr. Buchanan said. "At the end of the day, we'll all survive, but, in the meantime, our personal lives have gone into turmoil. The frustration levels are very, very high."

Questions without answers dog these executives. The government is still nailing down the details of the new legislation, even as some trusts lobby for kinder rules.

And that has kept income trust CEOs very busy. Their schedules have come to look like football playbooks, as many say they have had to reschedule normal business meetings and put in extra hours, some working seven days a week.

"I've rescheduled business trips, and I've certainly had to juggle my schedule," said Mike Cordoba, CEO of Richmond, B.C.-based Boston Pizza Royalties Income Fund, who spoke by phone at 7 a.m., the only sliver of free time he had last week.

Uncertainty and confusion are some of the uncomfortable emotions CEOs are feeling these days.

To hear Mr. Cordoba tell it, he's going through a modified version of the famous five stages of grief -- and he hasn't quite reached acceptance yet.

"At first, it was total disbelief," he said. "As it settled in, there was a bit of anger. The next day, it went from anger to sheer pandemonium."

The next day was the day income trusts lost $20-billion of value on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That's when the phone calls and e-mails started pouring in -- and they haven't stopped yet.

"I've been struck by the conversations I've had with individual Canadians: 'I'm 70, I live in Prince Edward Island, I lost $25,000 on your stock -- what happened?' " said John Zahary, CEO of Calgary-based Harvest Energy Trust. "Some of these people are distraught, and there's very little someone like me can say."

And how is that affecting him? "It's disheartening to be in a situation where you're as helpless as this."

Mr. Buchanan said he feels frustrated, but tries to be comforting when he talks to some of the hundreds of investors who have been calling his company daily.

"You try to sympathize with them and tell them we didn't see this coming either," he said.

It's even trickier when outraged foreign investors call, and income trust CEOs are put in the position of defending Canada's honour -- even though they're just as angry about the government's surprise move.

"We've been called second-tier, a Banana Republic, Cana-zuela," Mr. Buchanan said.

Mr. Zahary has gotten the same type of calls. "One investor from outside Canada calls and says: 'What sort of country do you live in?' They are absolutely flabbergasted.

"It's tough," he added. "I'm a proud Canadian, but it's tough to be defensive of your country when your country does something like this."

Trust CEOs aren't licking their wounds on their own. The Canadian Association of Income Funds is trying to fight the proposed changes, and energy trusts have banded together as well. Leaders of energy trusts have met twice in Calgary since the decision. Seeing all those CEOs in the same room, united by a common cause, has been one of the more bizarre post-Halloween moments, Mr. Zahary said.

"We're all huddled up as a group to try to figure it out," he said.

Mr. Cordoba said he's feeling uncomfortable not knowing what the future holds for income trusts.

Before Boston Pizza converted in 2002, Mr. Cordoba said, he and his management team thoroughly educated themselves on the world of income trusts and all the possible angles. Now he finds himself back in the dark again.

"It's not a good feeling. As a CEO, you always want to have all the information you can." But since the announcement, "when you break it all down, it all comes back to one thing -- nobody really knows. There is a lot of panic, a lot of frustration. People are into speculation mode and that's a dangerous time."

What's on the daily agenda has also changed -- it's now all about the tax decision, from early in the morning to late in the night.

Harvest Energy Trust recently bought an oil refinery in Newfoundland for about $1.6-billion. Ordinarily, Mr. Zahary said, integrating that operation into Harvest would be the biggest thing on his plate. Instead, he's spending hours each day responding to the taxation decision.

"It's certainly not the most important issue that I think I should be working on," he said. "I should be playing offence, not defence. In the last two weeks, it's just been defence."

Mr. Zahary said he divides his world into two eras: BH and AH -- or Before Halloween and After Halloween.

Still, they're all trying to devise a new game plan in a suddenly uncertain world.

"You can get mad, that has its place, but you try to maintain a clear head," Mr. Zahary said. "It's nothing to despair from."

Mr. Cordoba said it helps him to look back at other crises his 40-year-old business has survived, such as the introduction of the GST, which directly hit sales.

"The way you handle stress is to remain very, very positive," Mr. Cordoba said.

"You say, okay, these are the new goalposts. Let's deal with the situation and tackle the problem head-on."