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Several people have said: "I looked all over your website. Where's your Bio? I want to know more about you..." And, yes, I realize that it's hard dealing on the Web with people you don't meet face to face. So for those of you who asked, here I am. But I must say one of the most difficult pieces of writing is writing about yourself...
Dad was once a teacher and supervising school principal in suburban Toronto, Ontario - until the pressures of the job drove him East to an old farmhouse in rural New Brunswick. His dissatisfaction with the school system led him to teach, first me, and in time, each of my three brothers at home (Mind you, this was many, many years before the words "home schooling" ever entered the language). And today, while my education continues, as it always will, I have yet to spend a day inside a formal classroom. The closest I came to sitting in a classroom was when I dated a university professor and sat in on some of her lectures...
Over the years, I've repaired and built barns and houses, and stood atop many a roof re-sheathing it afresh to keep the weather out. Once, I dreamed of building boats. Cape Cod catboats, in strip-plank, with the hull built over a internal form. Back
Today, I live in the Northern woods on a secondary road, off a secondary road, insulated, but not isolated from, as Thomas Hardy once put it, "...the madding crowd". It's quiet around here. Great for writing. This photo shows our pond where I have spent many happy hours observing its teaming aquatic life. The sea is an hour's drive away; the river, a fifteen minute walk. The house I live in sits on a hill overlooking the island where in 1610 French fur traders from St. Malo established the first permanent
Besides being a modelbuilder, I'm also a writer and a researcher (it all helps to pay the bills!). Sometimes it is very difficult to see the distinctions between them. As always my passion is education, or rather learning, for I, as Winston Churchill once remarked, love learning but dislike being taught. This is something I must have inherited from my Dad. After all, I believe education, or learning, should never stop, for once it does, do we not slowly die? Personally, I can hardly wait until I have children of my own to pass this love along.
I first started building ships in bottles many years ago when I discovered a couple of books on the subject in the library. Here, at last, I thought, is the perfect way of combining my long study of naval architecture, boatbuilding, and maritime history with my love of the sea. But, no, I'm not especially patient at working, peering through the neck of a bottle. Just determined. :)
And, no, before you ask, I've never been to sea. Yet. Who knows what the remaining years will bring?
So, what am I besides a shipbuilder (in bottles!)? Well, the answer is not easy for it varies with the season, and the year. And it is very hard to define one's self in a few words. Over the years, my education, training, and experience has been diverse: Marine biology, naval architecture & seamanship, architectural drafting, frame house construction, French and Dutch, graphic arts, creative writing, (to name a few), plus the many, varied everyday skills necessary to maintain an independent life in a rural setting. 
then, it was innovative technology. The project fell through however, after much work and planning, when we had to move suddenly. I lost the timber for my first boat (cut and hauled out of the woods on a toboggan in the winter) when I had to leave the logs behind. After that, I didn't have the time as we hacked and forged a new home out of a barren wilderness of logging slash and impenetrable second growth. 
European settlement in this part of North America. Below me, the Saint John River, often called the "Rhine of the Americas", spreads out into the broad expanse called the Long Reach, a 15 by 1.5 mile (24 x 2 km) wide, glacial gash that forms part of the river's estuary. The second photo is a view of the river taken from the cliff on the front of out property.