For those of you
who don’t know Canada, Saskatchewan
is in the prairies, roughly in the
middle of the country, one of the
rectangle provinces with Alberta on
one side, Manitoba on the other, Montana
and North Dakota below us and the
North West Territories above. The
population of Saskatchewan is just
over a million people, the largest
city is Saskatoon at about 215,000,
all our rivers empty into Hudson Bay
and our principal export industries
are agriculture (producing over 54%
of the wheat grown in Canada), mining,
manufacturing and tourism. Indeed,
half the province is prime agricultural
land and predominately flat, however
the other half is forest and the entire
land mass is dotted with more than
100,000 lakes. In the southwest, at
a place called Cypress Hills, we have
the highest point of land east of
the Rockies.
After spending my
youth as a tow-headed farm boy who
dutifully milked cows, worked the
fields and graduated from high school,
I moved to Saskatoon to discover my
future. The city’s name was
derived from the Cree name “Mis-sask-quah-toomina”,
referring to the berry that grows
abundantly in the area, commonly known
as the saskatoon. The city is commonly
ranked as one of the best cities to
live in in its category (under 250,000
people) and I think so too. With the
South Saskatchewan River running through
it, Saskatoon is an uncommonly beautiful
city with a thriving business and
cultural environment. In addition
to being home to the graceful University
of Saskatchewan campus and one of
the world’s most sophisticated
centres of agriculture-biotechnology
research—Innovation Place—Saskatoon
boasts the most annual hours of sunshine
of any major city in Canada—all
the better to enjoy everything the
city has to offer, from art galleries,
museums, heritage sites, live theatre,
symphony, opera, fine dining and countless
festivals and exhibitions and events
celebrating our world-class writers,
artists, musicians and artisans.
From 1980 to 1983
I attended the University of Saskatchewan
(UofS) with the original intent of
becoming an Optometrist. Obviously
I wasn’t seeing my future very
clearly (pun intended). During these
years I supplemented meagre student
loans by taking on a plethora of odd
jobs, including one dreadful summer
working in a uranium mine in Northern
Saskatchewan as a bull cook. According
to Webster’s dictionary a bull
cook is a person who performs various
chores in a logging camp. Close enough.
I did everything from scouring pots
to cleaning bunkhouses (yech) to pushing
a broom to making cinnamon buns in
the middle of the night. As summer
help, I was on a two-week-in-one-week-out
rotation. Muscles sore, skin rashed
from harsh detergents, eyes bleary
from radical swing shifts, and ears
ablaze from the swearing (the most
common language spoken in the camp)—and
that was only the first day—I
was ready to go home in short order.
But I toughed it out, learned a lot
about different kinds of people, developed
friendships—some lasting to
this day—and made some cash.
The next summer I took a job as a
waiter in a nice, quiet, biker bar.
Having changed my
major from optometry to social work
to psychology I received a rather
varied-discipline Bachelor of Arts
(BA) degree (with distinction) in
1983. This gave me the credentials
to get yet another job as a waiter.
I returned to the UofS the following
year and took shockingly few classes
which allowed me to become a teacher.
My father was a teacher, my brother-in-law
was a teacher, I was a smart guy with
a BA with no career prospects, it
just made sense.
Hated it. For my
practicum I was a stationed in a very
small town, boarded with the local
priest, and was assigned a grade three/four
split classroom. I will forevermore
have great respect for the plight
of teachers. It’s hard work,
long hours and well, although I had
the opportunity to teach some wonderful
children…some just aren’t
so wonderful…especially the
little guy with the knife or the girl
who wouldn’t shut up…ever.
Again I toughed it out and learned
a lot, but this life fit me about
as well as my stint as a bull cook
and I knew it.
Eventually I ran
screaming back to Saskatoon and buried
myself in a few years of professional
rebellion and introspection—if
it’s possible to do both at
the same time. During this time I
worked in retail—shoe stores
were my favourite choice (beginning
a lifelong love of footwear)—and
restaurants and bars, oftentimes holding
down two or three jobs at a time,
getting off work at midnight or one
o’clock then heading out to
the clubs and after hours bars with
my friends. Ah, youth.
Although I tried
to be fanciful and carefree, I was
unable to deny a natural ambition
and inbred work ethic and usually
rose to positions of leadership and
management, get bored and move on
to the next. I’ll always look
back fondly at that time in my life
for I truly did enjoy a bit of rebellion,
I met some awesome people, had a lot
of fun, learned life lessons, had
fun, danced a lot, smoked and drank,
was broke, had a few marvelously tortuous
romances and ultimately, came to know
who I was…now it was time to
figure out who I wanted to become.
I returned to the
University of Saskatchewan a little
older, a little wiser and with the
idea that it was time to make some
serious money, wear a suit, carry
a briefcase and have people call me
mister. So of course I decided to
become an accountant.
1991 was a big year
for me. I had been hired by the international
audit and accounting firm of Ernst
& Young, I wrote the grueling
four-day Uniform Final Exam (UFE)
with the hopes of qualifying for the
Chartered Accountant (CA) designation,
I began my current day relationship
with my partner Herb and I received
two more university degrees: a Bachelor
of Education (BEd) and a Bachelor
of Commerce (BComm) (with distinction).
I was successful
in my UFE and received my CA designation
in 1993 and continued on the path
to become the best darn accountant
I could be. I focused on corporate
audit (with a brief foray into human
resources—no need to get complacent
after all) and in due time was promoted
to an audit manager position. Oh,
oh, you know what that means.
For many years Herb
and I have had the habit of starting
out each year by going someplace hot
with plenty cold cocktails, taking
stock of the year just passed and
planning goals for the year upcoming.
A common theme of mine was to lament
the lack of time I’d spent writing
(which often totaled zero unless you
counted reports for work) and set
the following goal: spend more time
writing.
As a CA, I was working
many hours, weekends and evenings,
which left little time for creative
writing. And if I did have the time,
the last thing I wanted to do was
sit down in front of a computer. So
the goal, frustratingly, went unfulfilled
from year to year. But I’m a
goal-oriented guy and the idea of
it was never far from my mind. Actually,
it had always been somewhere in my
noggin since I was wee lad old enough
to put pen to paper: I always knew—or
at least dreamed—that I would
someday become a writer.
I’m also someone
who feels the need to express myself
creatively so if I couldn’t
write…I’d throw a party!
For several years, 1991 to 1998, I
reveled in creating these elaborate
social events for our friends and
family which involved months of intricate
planning and coordination. It all
began innocently enough with a cake
decorating contest for Herb’s
30th birthday party which led to The
Halloween Road Rally ’92, Parody
of a Cocktail Party ’93, A Night
in Monte Carlo ’93, Atlantis
Olympics ’94, Airport 96—The
Congo, The Gong Show ’97 and
The Anniversary Party ’98. They
were such a blast. Although I never
say never, we’ve put the theme
parties to rest, and currently focus
our party-giving talents on backyard
pool parties in the summer and dinner
parties in the winter and our annual
Xmas Opener party at the end of November
or first days of December which is
attended by upwards of 150-200 of
some of the best people you’ve
ever met. As an aside, there has been
speculation whether it was coincidence
that the theme parties ended about
the same time as I began to write
full time. Did I exchange one form
of creative expression for another?
Maybe.
It was also during
this time, and continuing to this
day, that Herb and I indulged ourselves
in one of our favourite pastimes:
travel. We are what I think of as
varied travellers; sometimes we travel
for culture, sometimes for work, sometimes
for adventure and sometimes for pure
sloth. By sheer volume (myself over
a dozen times and Herb has long stopped
counting), Hawaii would seem to be
our spot of choice; and indeed it
is a little piece of restful heaven
for us. Just thinking of one of those
special maitais at the Royal Hawaiian
Sunset Bar or watching Lelanni doing
the hula at the Halekulani or spending
lazy late afternoons on the beach
watching the sun set at 6:01 gets
me itchy to go right now. But we’ve
also spent a lot of time in Mexico,
Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York City
and, another one of Herb’s favourites,
France. In addition to travelling
a fair bit within Canada (Halifax,
Vancouver, Montreal to name a few)
and other US spots (Florida, California,
and the east coast including Provincetown),
we’ve been fortunate enough
to set our feet in Thailand, India,
Ukraine, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia,
Bahamas, Spain, Italy, Jamaica, and
most recently South Africa, Botswana
and Zambia. I could go on forever
about each of these wonderful places.
My mother keeps on saying to me, “You’ve
been everywhere” and I keep
on saying to myself “I won’t
have enough time in one life to go
everywhere”. We’re lucky
to have had the chance, sometimes
through Herb’s work and now
my own, and sometimes by good fortune,
to have seen so much of the world.
The Russell Quant stories always include
an element of travel as a reflection
of this love of mine and perhaps,
in a small way, a chance to immortalize
in words a part of these life adventures.
I think it was in
Ixtapa, Mexico that year, 1999, when
the die was cast. The time for lamenting
was done. The goal needed to become
reality. I had to write, I had to
fulfill that boyhood dream, I had
to fill that space, I needed to get
happy with life. And no one knew it
more than Herb. If it wasn’t
for his understanding and encouragement
and unyielding support, well, I don’t
know if it would have happened. And
boy did it happen fast. Because once
the seed was in my head that this
could actually be, that I could try
being a writer, it was, from then
on, a slippery slope. And I slid down
it FAST. Within months I gave notice
to leave my decade long career as
a CA, left my job—briefcase
and closet full of suits along with
it—on a Friday and on the following
Monday I was in my home office pecking
out the first words of my first novel.
For those of you
who are wondering, that first novel,
a thriller entitled, On The Eighth
Day, is still in a box somewhere (I
still think it’s pretty good).
The first Russell Quant mystery was
the second novel I wrote. I’m
still amazed by that. I’m amazed
that this is now a series and that
people I don’t know read these
books in cities and countries I don’t
live in. I’m amazed that I can
(truthfully) refer to myself as an
award-winning published author…but
I’ve stopped answering the phone
that way.
