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Biography |
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I was born in 1967 in Montreal Canada. The fourth child of 5 children, born to Valeada
May and Cecil Gilbert. My parents were both from Ontario, my mother was born in the small northern community of Mattawa Ontario, and my Father, was born near Hamilton. As the second youngest in my family it was natural for me to thrive
under challenges and to pursue my interests under the guidance of my older siblings. The first 14 years of my life were spent in Montreal, while the past few decades have found me settled in the Prairies. I made Edmonton Alberta Canada my home in
the early eighties, and have never really desired to live anywhere else. This town is so friendly and comfortable to me that some days I feel I could walk up the street in my
pajamas with coffee cup in hand, and no one would even stare. The western provinces are beautiful with the definitive four seasons and gorgeous sunsets. I find that just waking up to the sounds and smells of the prairies helps to fire my creative inspiration, and imaginings.
I began writing at an early age, around 13 years old. I was inspired by several mentors in my life who were in many ways very close to me. From 1975 to 1978 I attended Resurrection Elementary in Lachine Quebec. I was raised Catholic for the first years of my life, and later in my twenties I would rediscover religion within the Christian communities. However at this stage of my life I have become much more spiritual and less concerned with the political correctness of one particular religion or another. God will be God regardless of what I think of Him. It was my grade school teacher, Mrs. Sheila Keating, who fine tuned the love I have for writing and prose, simply by revealing her own love for the written word. She would read us passages from novels, poetry, and explain in detail the nuances of what the writer was trying to say through the story, this fascinated me. It is a debt of gratitude, that I owe her for giving to me the gift of the pen and paper. From there I attended Bishop Whelan High school, (B.W.H.S.) for grades 7 and 8, before having to relocate with my family out west. I left behind many dear friends who have remained in my heart to this day. I have always thought of Montreal as home, and miss the special way that city affected my development as a writer. In many ways I owe Montreal for many of the flavours of my personality and my heritage. I attended grade 9 at Sacred Heart Elementary in Edmonton Alberta in 1982, and began my senior High school courses at Saint Joseph Composite High in 1983. I graduated from "Joes" in 1985 and began a minor military career with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and later spent some time with Princess Patricia's Light Infantry. Shortly after that, I pursued some vocational and technical training in Power Engineering and Water Treatment and began working within the oilfield and manufacturing fields. I married my lovely wife Charlene in 1993, she encouraged me greatly to continue to write and pursue many of the avenues that ultimately lead me to my present level of literary achievement and confidence. We settled in one of Edmonton's quieter neighborhoods. I moved in and out of several industrial settings before finally deciding to pursue my writing interests with purpose. |
While I aspire to write other things and have started several books, poetry has always been a great passion of mine. At times I feel as though it is the requirement of my day to try and write “something, anything”. I love the way that it makes your mind and heart work together in some kind of synchronous way, and it seems to me to be necessary to unravel the essential conditions of being human. I often choose to disappear to the cabin for a few days to write and collect my thoughts on paper before returning to hammer them into some sort of work, but it never seems much like work to me, I just love to write. I mostly use a laptop these days, however if I get the chance, I prefer to “bang” stuff out on my Smith Corona Sterling typewriter, it just feels like you are writing when you use older technology; plus the typewriter does not seem to mind the smoke from a campfire or the lack of a power cord and outlet to recharge batteries. While the typewriter can be very mood setting and an absolute joy to work with, I still enjoy using just a plain old “papermate medium blue” pen and a nicely lined piece of note paper the most; there is something so very satisfying about getting ink on your fingers or the tactility of the medium of paper and notebooks. Mind you the typewriter is pretty good at getting my hands all inky in its own way, and I can still buy the replacement ribbons at Staples !
I can never tell when or where an idea for a piece
of writing will come from. Often it's when my mind is "somewhere
else", we writers tend to be in that state often. I have had so many
of my very best works come to me on little scraps of paper while I was at my
day job. The most mundane of tasks can ultimately free our minds to
greater things, I have always believed that. It would seem that the
problem solving tools we have work best in a relaxed state. When we
forget about ourselves, we truly can become better than we are in that
moment.
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