Here is a little homage to some of the Canadian people, places and things ( in no particular order) that made me the reader and writer I am today.
1. The New Hamburg Public Library & Mrs. Leu the children’s librarian. She was the first person to really talk with me about books.
2. Anne of Green Gable & Lucy Maude Montgomery. Predictable but I loved these books and they filmed part of the second series in the Allan Gardens near my apartment in Toronto when I was at U of T. I walked right past the filming one wintry night and saw Anne & Morgan Harris (Megan Follows & Frank Converse).
3. Pierre Berton. Thank you , Pierre, for introducing me to popular history and making nerdy cool.
4. The world Book Encyclopedia 1968 and the Canadian Encyclopedia. I spent many hours reading these. My family owned the first and I bought the second when they first came out in 1985. You can get it online for free at
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com
5. Robertson Davies. I used to see him walking around Massey College at U of T & longed to talk to him, but didn’t. If you haven’t read anything by him, you should!
6.Mrs. Enticknap my Grade 13 English teacher at Brantford Collegiate Institute. She saw me as a reader and writer and gave me the room to experiment with both.
Happy Canada Day, everyone!
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