I began teaching later in life (at 50) and after a decade of teaching on campus, I convinced the English department at UBC (6 years ago) that my courses were suited for online learning so I could return to a life of travel and earn an income. I was never motivated by a desire to become a fixture (tenure-track). I came and went; three times teaching with the Semester at Sea program, sailing around the world and 900 miles up the Amazon River and building my house in the jungle in Belize. In my thirties, I studied and worked in theatre, mostly Fringe theatre. My research and productions garnered attention as I toured across Canada with my small theatre troupe (most notably The Happy Cunt 1994). CBC’s Morningside’s host called me ‘The High Priestess of the Fringe’ . I am a recipient of the SSHRC award (1992 – 98) which funded my work on Fringe theatre in Canada: Ordering Chaos, the Canadian Fringe (Ph.D. dissertation, UVic. 1999). In my twenties I worked on commercial fish boats on the West Coast and earned my Master Navigations papers (Class 4) with the Pacific Marine Institute. I was a teenage mom, which in those days meant I was a highschool dropout – they kicked out the pregnant girls (but not the boys).
A Memoir of the Imagination in Three Parts 