A (not very) brief biography
I’m a Canadian based in Berlin, Germany. My day job is a senior technical writer but I am a historian (and carpenter) by training.
Toronto
My hometown is Toronto, Canada. Its no longer the sleepy and slow town it was when I grew up there in the 60s/70s. My family moved north to Richmond Hill, an even more sleepy town than Toronto. I made up for that by customizing muscle cars and racing them on the empty roads in the back country. In those days, these empty night-time streets were ideal race tracks to push the pedal to the metal and see what my car could do (Plymouth GTXs).
Eventually my car’s insatiable appetite for fuel and car parts led me to leave school to work in factories to make money.
Alberta
After a few years of that and my parent’s growing impatience with my loud car, I decided (with their blessing) to head west to Alberta at the tender age of 17 to start a new chapter in my life. So my buddy and I moved to the booming town of Calgary having only 150.00 CDN dollars between us.
We managed the trip by coasting down any hill we encountered on the highways to save gas. We survived on a bag full of cooked corn cobs, one block of Wisconsin cheese and a jug of orange juice. After 52 hours non-stop driving, we arrived in Calgary and settled in at a friend’s apartment.
My buddy joined construction crews while I took odd jobs and then finished my high school at the Calgary Vocational Center, a high school for adults. When I finished my high school, I went to work to make money for our trip back east. One company I worked for was a company that made drill bits for oil rigs and was once owned by the famous Howard Hughes.
Lancaster, PA
After three years in Alberta I decided to move to the United States. Why? I was invited to move to Lancaster, Pennsylvania by some friends and I wanted to study at Penn State University. I quite enjoyed Lancaster County. It was and presumably still is a nice town surrounded by Amish farms. I often saw those Amish/Mennonite horse and buggies trotting up major roads on their way to markets.
Not being able to afford Penn State despite saving as much as I could, I started attending a local college (Millersville State College) to take evening courses in computer science. It was pay as you go - Work all day - study in the evening life. My first computer language I learned was Fortran, specifically WATFIV Fortran from the University of Waterloo. But it was not sustainable.
Rhode Island
After a year or so, I moved on to Rhode Island to live by the Atlantic coast. I was fortunate to work for a old New England carpenter who kindly taught me how to install cedar shingles and to renovate turn of the century seaside homes. During my time off I enjoyed walking along the seashore of the Atlantic Ocean in Westerly, Rhode Island. I did manage to attend evening classes at the University of Rhode Island. I kept at it as best I could, but like my studies in Lancaster, it was not sustainable.
University of Waterloo
After six years I returned to Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. After a year or so doing carpentry as well as landscape construction, I decided to focus on my University goals. Both my parent’s and my own surprise, I was accepted at the University of Waterloo to study English and History.
The twin cities of Kitchener/Waterloo turned out to be quite similar to Lancaster except that the horse and buggies were owned by Old Order Mennonites rather than Amish. Some of my favourite professors were Mennonite or associated with Mennonite churches.
Initially, my plan was to become a high-school teacher so I studied English and History and minored in Psychology. However, during my last year I discovered teachers were having a hard time finding work. After looking around I discovered technical writing. This seemed like a good second choice for a career. I loved to write and to teach so this career path fit in with my goals.
So, beginning in 1994 I started my career at in Toronto as a technical writer, moving on to Vancouver, then Berlin, Germany documenting computer software and hardware.
Back to Canadian History
As I wind down my technical writing career, I can now focus on Canadian History, which is why I started my [Beyond Brant and Brock Substack]https://glennjlea.substack.com/).
About this website
I am grateful to Lesslie Sosa (see her LinkedIn profle here) for building this website, which is based on Hugo and the PaperMod theme.