It’s All About Life Experience – Shaped into Story

I am fascinated by people’s stories. I love hearing them, recording them and formatting them in a way that makes them accessible to a broader audience. I also have a passion for sharing my travel and wilderness experiences.

For my first book of profiles, I collaborated with artist Valerie Hodgson. Our collaboration started over dinner at a mutual friend’s house. Val had begun painting an ambitious body of work that would celebrate Yukon women.

I had begun to fulfill my lifelong ambition to capture—through people’s stories—what makes the Yukon and the people who live there so remarkable.

It seemed only natural for us to work together on a project that would eventually encompass both an art exhibit and a book. The art exhibit,YukonWomen, 50 Over 50, was held at the Yukon Art Centre Public Gallery from June 2 to August 27, 2011. I launched the book, Remarkable Yukon Women, on June 2, 2011. It is published under the Lost Moose imprint of Harbour Publishing.

I grew up in a small town on the remote Gaspé peninsula, Quebec and went west to Alberta for college. The prospect of a summer job took me to the Yukon in 1977. Over the next thirty-one years, I worked as a recreation director and labourer in a remote mining town, then moved to Whitehorse to work as a programmer in a senior care facility, as a fill-in at CBC Radio North, as an executive director in economic development and tourism, and as a consultant. From the trap line to the board room – the Yukon offered it all.

My husband Ed and I travel on active adventures – from hiking the Tour de Mont Blanc to canoeing the Thomsen River, North America’s northernmost navigable river. We live ‘up the mountain’ outside Penticton, BC and keep an apartment overlooking the Yukon River in Whitehorse.