Who I am as a person owes everything to where I came from and to those who touched my life during my journey from then to now.

I was born in my father’s hometown of Midland, on the south shore on Georgian Bay. Midland is one of those archetypal Ontario towns that gave birth in Stephen Leacock’s imagination to the mythical community of “Mariposa.” My sister, two brothers and I grew up next to the town ballpark and fair ground, a kilometre from the wooden palisade of a reconstructed 16 th century Huron-Ouendat village that still stands on a hill overlooking Little Lake, where we learned to swim .

The greatest gift my parents, Muriel and Roy Shakell gave me was to instill in me the self-confidence that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. I continue to draw upon those small town values that come with being a Boy Scout and from learning to play basketball at the YMCA. Today, my father resides in the same 100 year-old home he and my mother purchased in 1950. My family’s home phone number has never changed .

I graduated from University College at the University of Toronto, specializing in English and Religious Studies, and moved west in the early 1970s to undertake a Masters in Stage Direction in the Theatre Department at the University of Victoria. My professional career began as an advertising copywriter for CJVIRadio, and a short while later I joined the writing department of CXWX Radio in Vancouver. In the late 1970s I went to Creative House, then the premiere multi image AV company in Canada, first as a writer, later becoming its Creative Director . I formedScribbler’s Inc. in 1981 .

My wife Louise is an accomplished poet and painter. She and I divide our time between Vancouver and Hope, British Columbia, a small town at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley. When we return to our log home in the mountains, we read, paint, feed the birds, tend our gardens and find satisfaction in such activities as building the 100-foot long wall of piled stones that runs along the eastern boundary of our acreage. It is my privilege to serve as secretary of the Hope for the Best Society, a volunteer organization that strives to assist people with mental and emotional problems, and their families, funding this work through the operation of a used book store and drop-in centre called Pages .

A voracious reader, an inveterate garage saler and an incurable collector, I am constantly on the lookout for treasures, specifically: Anti-Axis Homefront propaganda (particularly two and three dimensional caricature); pre-1955 vintage paperbacks, digests and pulp magazines (particularly those using skull and skeleton motifs in their cover art); 1st edition detective fiction; miscellaneous spoken word and comedy records; 1930s & 40s chalkware; litho’d tin toys; and comics (particularly Undergrounds and the 1940’s funny animal title, Punch and Judy Comics).

Louise and I play Tai Chi every morning in Vancouver’s Memorial Park with our friend and Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dr. Lyla May Yip. We are privileged to take instruction in traditional Chen-style tai chi from our esteemed teacher, Master Wilson Wu at his Richmond school, Kungfu Ocean .

That, as they say, is about all that’s fit to print — and probably much more than you ever wanted to know.