About Heather

Heather has lived on a Canadian Gulf Island for most of her life, but when she was ten or so she lived on a farm in Southern Ontario and that experience is fictionalized in the Patti Stories. However, many of Patti's experiences are a blend of that setting and of raising her own family of three girls in a rural setting on Saltspring Island. These stories draw on the realities of both places and it is this that gives Heather's writing that extra ring of truth.

Heather has been a teacher, a CUSO volunteer in South America, and has sailed the Pacific in a wooden schooner. She has two BA s from the University of Victoria, in English and Psychology and in Creative Writing. She has also published poetry and magazine articles.

She is presently writing an adult novel set on the West Coast.




Monday, December 7, 2015


Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

This quote from Goethe was an important one in our life. We found it on a plaque on a coastal island while we were struggling with our plan to voyage offshore in our big wooden schooner, Shiriri. At every stage in any great endeavor there are moments when what lies ahead seems too much and we wish for a way out of our commitments. The hardest part of any voyage is casting loose the dock lines. Those words, the favorite quote of a mountain climber who died on K2, were just what we needed to stiffen our resolve.
The Patti Stories partake of the essence of Goethe's words. Patti is just a young girl when the stories begin, but she is a determined creature, she figures things out and makes things happen and changes herself in the process. In the Joan story we see the same process working in her life. Joan wants a home, some stability, and she wants to accomplish this through her own hard work and skill. She succeeds in building her dream, her deepest desire, and is changed too in the process. As Goethe says, “boldness has genius, power, and magic in it”.



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