I was named after my mom, Mary Lou (Louise), and my dad's Aunt Anne. I often get called Anne Marie, Rose Marie, Mary Louise, Rose Ann, or just plain Anne, which isn't me either. My dad called me Weezie and my oldest niece spent her early years calling me Aunt Anjeweeze.

I was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in a time when no one locked their doors and phone numbers were only three digits. Antigonish is famous for its Highland Games, Saint Francis Xavier University (X for short) and the Coady International Institute. Every summer bagpipes called and my dad wore his Clan Ranald kilt. In autumn the population doubled when students arrived. And people from all over the world walked around in colorful native dress, many shivering under new parkas and toques when it was barely cool outside.

I was born in love with horses. As a baby, anything horsy caught my attention. When I was four my mom made the huge mistake of getting my photo taken on a pony. I begged for my very own horse ever after.

I’m the third child of seven. Big families were normal in the fifties. The six neighbouring houses on our street brought the count to 38 kids for wild games of kick-the-can, red rover red rover and backyard baseball. There were stacks of comic books for trading, slingshot-chokecherry wars and snow forts of epic proportions.

I was a very shy kid. Animals were easier to understand than people and I spent much of my time alone with my imagination, craft and art projects, my family's many cats and the neighborhood dogs … the bigger the better.

When I was old enough to bicycle out of town, I spent as many hours as possible hanging out with a herd of Welsh ponies. They taught me a lot of important stuff, like how to feed treats without losing fingers, how to keep toes from under hooves, that trees are hard on riders knees and never go into the pasture with a box of sugar cubes.

At twelve I got real riding lessons and the following year my mom helped me buy my very own best friend - the biggest German shepherd I could find.

I loved to read - to get lost in stories of adventure and people braver than me. I consumed C. S. Lewis's Narnia series and the early masters of Science-fiction (my father's collection). My teen years were a challenge. Filled with massive highs and lows. Hormones are a nasty business. I learned to play the flute and in school I got involved in theatre and hung out with the artsy/hippie crowd.

 

When I was sixteen I bought a horse, a half-thoroughbred yearling that promised to grow extra large. I named him Highland Laird and trained him myself and loved him more than anything - until I met Frank.

 

We met in our freshman year at X. We are still happily together traveling the roller-coaster of life. I have worked as a veterinary assistant, dog trainer, dog groomer, commercial artist, and Manager of Animal and Plant Care for the university. Over fifty years of family, friends, work, building a home, loved ones with Alzheimer's, too many funerals, cancer, hope, joy and love. In the middle of it all I started writing.

I wrote a picture book first. I thought shorter was easier. Ha! Nanny-Mac's Cat (Ragweed Press, 1995) has less than a 1000 words but took me a year to write. The Memory Stone (Ragweed Press, 1998, Nimbus Publishing, 2003) and The Dog Wizard (Ragweed Press, 1999) followed. Then I combined my two greatest passions, writing and horses in the novel The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green (Kids Can Press, 2005). It was printed in five languages and sold very well in Europe.

 

That's when I started working part-time at X to have more time for writing and teaching natural horse and hoof care. Seeing Red was released in the spring of 2009. In 2010 I published My Natural Horses, combining my writing, my teaching experience and my photographic and artistic background.

I retired from X in 2014 and embarked on what has become yet another passion, creating horse sculptures from driftwood, beach glass and pebbles. And I am currently working on a fantasy novel about a twelve year old girl named Ocean and her horse.