About Me

I was born in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada, and lived there and in St. John's until I got my BA(Hons) degree in English (minor in French) when I was 21.

I moved to Toronto and earned an MA in English, focusing on 18th-century British literature in the coursework and doing a thesis on the Rambler essays by Samuel Johnson, graduating when I was 22.

Degrees in English literature weren't the path to a successful career, especially during a recession, so I moved to Toronto looking for any kind of work. I ended up working at a temporary help agency doing mostly manual labour for about a year. When I was 23 I completed one trimester in Journalism in London, Ontario, before dropping out and then returning to live in Corner Brook during the fall, where I turned 24 before moving back to London to earn a Master of Library Science degree by the time I was 25. After a couple of work terms my first "real" job was at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa as a serials cataloguer. I went on to work as a manager and senior manager at the libraries of MIT, Queen's University, and Carleton University, where I retired as University Librarian when I was 60. I moved back to St. John's about four years later but then moved to my current hometown, Calgary, Alberta, when I was 66.

Life is not all education and working of course. In the midst of this I was married for a year and a half when I was 27–29, wrote novels and short fiction and articles, as well as articles and reviews academically in the field of library and information studies.

I am blessed (secularly) with a few excellent friends, and my main interests these days are podcasting, reading, movies, stand-up comedy, Johnson and Nabokov, minimalism, and getting fitter.