When we began this home birth story project, I was volunteering for a number of non-profit organizations, writing and designing their newsletters and promotional materials. From 2000 until 2011, I freelanced as a journalist, copywriter and technical writer.

Specialization wasn’t really my thing (it should have been, but it wasn’t) so I contributed to pre-dot com boom websites, and then to national and regional print publications in Canada and the U.S. I wrote about fitness, parenting, positive psychology, business development, marketing, interior design, and women’s issues; I interviewed authors, business people, obstetricians, academics, psychologists, educators, athletes, entrepreneurs, office workers and parents. I wrote professional biographies and course descriptions, software user manuals, media releases, newsletters, brochures, direct mail, website copy, biographies and fund-raising pitches. I ghostwrote a book and contributed articles to industry and trade association newsletters under my own byline, and on behalf of my clients.

In 2002, my interest in under-documented women’s history was given a huge boost when I joined the Saskatoon Women’s Calendar Collective, researchers, writers and editors of Herstory: The Canadian Women’s Calendar. In a date-book format, Herstory published 350 word profiles of Canadian women and women’s groups whose contributions to their communities and country had been overlooked by traditional historians. My first pieces appeared in the 2003 edition of Herstory, my last pieces in the 2009 edition.

In 2011, I gave up the scramble of the freelancing life and went to work at McNally Robinson, Canada’s greatest ever bookstore. (Officially, Canada’s largest independent bookstore, but I like my description better.) After three years there, I moved on to more computer-related things, and now work as a Product Specialist & program coordinator at ErgoCanada.

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The first edition of Herstory was published in 1974. The SWCC was refreshed periodically with new members and, except for a brief hiatus when they looked for a new publisher, documented women’s history every year for the next 40 years. The Collective disbanded in 2015.