11,000 Days at School
Biography and Memoir
Showing 1–12 of 27 results
Showing 1–12 of 27 results
Hugh Greer was born and raised in Burnaby, British Columbia. After graduating from Burnaby Central Secondary School, he completed his Bachelor of Education degree at the University of British Columbia. He began his teaching career with the Vancouver School District in 1973. After nine years of classroom teaching, during which time he completed his Master of Education Degree in Counselling Psychology, he became a high school counsellor. Eleven years later he was promoted to the position of high school vice principal. After 35 years working in education, Hugh retired in 2009. Hugh now lives in Ladner, BC with his wife Wendy. He has two adult daughters and three young grandsons. He enjoys travelling the world, watching English Premier League Football and driving his 1969 MGB. After marking the writing of others for most of his career, at age 71, Hugh decided to venture into the realm of writing his own work. 11,000 Days at School is Hugh’s first published work.
You can access Hugh’s website here.
Joseph S. Werlin (1900 – 1964) was the first PhD candidate at the University of Chicago approved for a proposed thesis on the origins of the Russian Revolution. In January 1928, he set out from Galveston, Texas, to study in Berlin and Moscow. His travel diary shows his curiosity to understand foreign ways and cultures, foretelling an unanticipated career turn.
At age 10, Joe’s immigrant parents moved their family from Philadelphia to Pearland, Texas. After a brief stint at Annapolis, he entered Rice Institute in the fall of 1920, completing a B.A. in European History. He earned an M.A. from University of Chicago in 1926, and a PhD., in 1931. The Great Depression, anti-Soviet fears, and anti-Semitism combined to dash opportunities in his chosen area of study. In 1934, he was offered a teaching appointment in Sociology on the first faculty of the University of Houston, where he remained until his death.
Joella Werlin was born and raised in Houston. Her Texas upbringing and outlook was differentiated from her peer group’s by summer travels with her professor father and journalist mother to Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba, where her father led international studies programs. She attended University of Texas/ Austin for one year before transferring to Connecticut College (New London), where she received a BA in European History. She holds a graduate Diploma in Anthropology from the University of Oxford. After marriage and living for several years on the East Coast, her family — with two young children, Adam Zivin and Joselyn Zivin — relocated to Portland, Oregon.
For 15 years, she served as Director of Public Affairs and Community Relations for the Portland ABC-TV affiliate. She later became a professional Personal Historian, helping individuals, families, and family-owned businesses preserve a permanent record of their life and career stories. Now retired, living in Seattle, Washington, “A Texas Greenhorn,” emerges from that most valued career experience.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Michael Frimer attended medical school at the University of Toronto before accepting an internship in general surgery at Vancouver General Hospital, where he became the youngest surgeon in Canada at the time, at age 29. Frimer is an award-winning dark room and large format photographer, with an avid curiosity and desire to tell stories through the process of creativity, often using his images to explore moments captured in time and to observe life as a series of overlapping dimensions that one must look beyond to see life’s bigger picture. He has sung with the University of Toronto choir, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Cantata singers in Vancouver. A respected surgeon for over 50 years, Frimer retired from practice in 2018.
Bogi Bjarnason was born of Icelandic parents in North Dakota in 1888. Between 1913 and 1927 he owned three Saskatchewan newspapers. During that time he saw action in WWI with the US Army and was gassed twice. Between 1927 and 1945 he lived in Manitoba, where he published two Icelandic papers and the Treherne Times. In 1933 he bought and flew a Pietenpol aircraft. He lived and wrote in Vancouver from 1945 until his death in 1977.
Gary’s relationship with animals began when he was seven, and soon he was connecting with other like-minded souls around the world. It was many years until he finally established Cinemazoo, a refuge for animals located in Surrey, outside Vancouver. From the 30 years since Cinemazoo was established, the number of exotic animals in his care has risen to over 300.
Clarissa P. Green has spent her life exploring and teaching how family relationships are changed by aging, illness and death. In her decades-long career as a therapist, Green has helped families reconfigure their relationships and conceptions of self in the face of trauma and aging.
An Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, Green’s Continuing Studies Programs “The Widowed Journey” and “The Mid-Life Daughters’ Workshop” ran successfully for more than a decade. Green was a founder of Teaching and Academic Growth (now the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre), and she has received numerous teaching awards including the Killam Teaching Prize from UBC and the prestigious 3M National Teaching Award.
Green’s belief that personal experience is necessary for learning and growth developed naturally alongside a lifelong passion for storytelling. Green completed the Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio program in 2007, and her short fiction piece The Coin won first prize at the Vancouver International Writer’s Festival in 2009. Green’s numerous works have been published in anthologies, Geist magazine, and The Fieldstone Review.
Phil Nealy is a career counsellor with a long history of working with students to help them find new directions. He currently acts as the senior admissions advisor for the Victoria campus of Sprott Shaw College.
Following a diving accident, Nealy was diagnosed as quadriplegic who would need a lifetime of constant care. Refusing predictions of his limitations from doctors, he strove to regain movement. He now lives independently, spending his leisure time exploring nature across Vancouver Island, swimming and snorkelling in the Caribbean.
He lives in Langford, BC.
David was raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio and has practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy for over 30 years. He has studied and worked in Ohio, Georgia, Alaska, Oregon and British Columbia. He now has a private practice where he uses a family orientation in his work with individuals, couples and families in Vancouver and on BC’s Sunshine Coast.
Rose Ngo is an experienced middle school teacher and mother of twins. Driven by her desire to positively connect with others, she takes time to volunteer, listen and care for those in her community. As an educator, her goals include imparting her love of learning and building confidence in her students. In addition to her primary job functions, Rose is committed to her promise to Christ in helping make our world a better place.
Wilson Ngo was an honest, charismatic and caring team leader and phenomenal friend. He thrived on his love for watching movies and good eats. As a dedicated husband and father, he hoped to impart his wisdom and love for life with his children. One of his final goals was to walk along side fellow colon cancer patients to not only provide mental support, but also spiritual sustenance. Wilson will always be remembered for not only being loyal and dependable, but also as one who always to stood up for what was right.
Sean Nosek has spent decades mastering the art of wandering. He has a particular affinity for back alleys, bookstores, and vintage shops. A former literature teacher, he is currently Assistant Superintendent of West Vancouver Schools. Sean is inspired by great works and great ideas, and believes wholeheartedly in “the creative life.” His blog, Zen for a Crazy World, has received international acclaim. He makes his home in Vancouver, Canada. He is happily married and the proud father of two daughters.
Ken Foster is a Vancouver artist who has spent more than two decades hocking his art on the street in order to survive. Born in 1970, the artist was adopted by a family in Ottawa, who brought him to Delta in 1978. During his teen years, skate culture drew him in: “it had the right degree of danger and was suitably badass and anti-authoritarian.” Best known for producing work on found material, Ken has become something of a local legend. At one low point, he spent eighteen months sleeping in an alleyway. Today, his followers consider his alleyway paintings to be iconic.
Ruth Abernethy overlaid her early mastery of needlework and lace-making with woodworking skills she acquired at her grandfather’s side. Then, as a teen, the many hours she played on stage with her musically-gifted family served as a bridge into imaginative theatre workshops across the country. In theatre, Ruth used all her hand skills to develop new structures and illusions. Ruth’s inventiveness found a further outlet in a collaborative home and studio design with her husband Mark Smyth in Wellesley, Ontario. While nurturing two sons at “The Flats”, Ruth created sculptures that present droll commentary on the human condition. The bronze portraits she developed are iconic figures in streetscapes across Canada.
