About Me

I am a writer, researcher and teacher with an eclectic range of interests.  I have been a full-time or part-time student almost continually since I entered kindergarten.  For my efforts, I have two graduate degrees — one in Comparative Literature and one in Communications and Technology.  For ten years, I worked in communications for the federal government of Canada where I have had the opportunity to learn media relations, events planning, internal communications, and web and multimedia design and development. I have recently returned to one of my first loves: teaching.

In my spare time (not much of this these days), I am a photographer, hiker, and passionate supporter of the arts (all of them). I live in Edmonton, Canada with my husband and young son.

Writer

My writing career began in Grade 2 when my father and I co-authored a story about a tugboat which was converted into a fish and chips stand.  Other early efforts included an essay on why I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder and (unrelated) poetry on politicians and aboriginal culture.  Fortunately, none of this has been published.

My love of writing and literature led me ultimately to a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature, for which I wrote a very serious and incomprehensible thesis on the feminine sublime.  (Don’t worry, I’m not really sure what the feminine sublime is either.) To atone for this obscure degree and dust-collecting oeuvre, I recently completed a second Master’s degree in Communications and Technology.  My final project for this degree was a narrative exploration of my experiences as a new mother and my research into the life of a woman who died in 1922 at the age of 30 and who left a young child behind. In other words, I stopped trying to act  smart and started to try to tell the stories which really matter to me.

I am currently working on biography of Jessie Alexander, an elocutionist who travelled across Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Although mostly forgotten today, she was once known as the most famous woman in Toronto and one of Canada’s special talents.

Have a look at my writing portfolio for samples of my writing.

Researcher

“Nancy, I do believe you are a maven,” a friend of mine told me after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point.  Guilty as charged.  I live for information and nothing makes me happier than locating an obscure detail in the hidden recesses of the web and sharing it with anyone who is interested. Currently, my research interests include nineteenth-century Canada (go figure!), social media, technology in the work place, the history of motherhood, career development, etc.

Not surprisingly, I have discovered the ultimate maven hobby: genealogy. I maintain a web site called Twigged which shows all of my genealogy research and on which I blog about my genealogy research. I am one course away from completing the first level of a professional certificate in Canadian genealogy from the University of Toronto.

Teacher

I have loved teaching from the moment I convinced my two younger sisters to sit still for a few minutes so that I could teach them some French.  Unfortunately for my sisters, I didn’t know a word of French at that time.  Now I try to stick to teaching topics on which I have more than a passing knowledge.  I have taught a wide variety of subject such as copywriting, social media and technology, North American culture, literature, and English as a Second Language.  I have posted a list of the courses I have taught here.