David R. McKay is a Registered Respiratory Therapist who describes himself a budding author of Contemporary Fiction, while transitioning into retirement. Sydney’s Promise is his first published work. He is the former editor of Airwaves, a quarterly journal produced by the Respiratory Therapy Society of Ontario, and regularly contributed many scientific, historical and op-ed articles to the journal.

David was born and raised in Port Hope. He left home for post-secondary education and returned to   live in Cobourg when he and his former high school sweetheart, Gloria, reconnected in 2009 and later married. He is a father figure to five wonderful human beings and two loyal German shepherds. In his spare time Dave enjoys  sports and music. He and Gloria are also active members of the Cobourg Legion Pipe Band, both as drummers.

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Drew Monkman is a naturalist and writer whose nature column, “Our Changing Seasons,” appears regularly in the Peterborough Examiner. He is the author of three books. Two of these explore what is happening in the natural world each month of the year. They are Nature’s Year in the Kawarthas (2002) and Nature’s Year: Changing seasons in Central and Eastern Ontario (2012) Drew also co-authored The Big Book of Nature Activities: A year-round guide to outdoor learning (2016) with Jacob Rodenburg, executive director of Camp Kawartha . The book is the winner of four awards, including the Nautilus Book Award, which is a major American award for environmental writing.

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Carolyn Helfenstein was only seventeen when she was hired to teach in a one-room rural schoolhouse near Toronto. After  finishing Teachers College she taught another four years.  Then she and her husband, Harry, ran a dairy farm for twenty-five years’ while bringing up their three children. By then Carolyn had become a journalist  and she and Harry bought and published the Teeswater News  for twelve years. However, those were difficult days for small community newspapers and they were obliged to close it down. To fill the void in her life, Carolyn found writing books the perfect challenge, producing the memoir WHY NOT? A MEMOIR IN BLACK AND WHITE about her years in the newspaper business. After this. she decided to research her family’s history in Newfoundland while studying at Waterloo University. This inspired her to write her novel, ROCK SOLID, which was was published recently

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This week we are marking the fifth anniversary of this show.  Little did we think at the time of our first broadcast, that our plans to record a 12 week series would stretch out so long that we are now beginning our sixth year on air. Through the years of making the show, we have met some wonderful writers, editors, teachers, play-wrights singer-song writers, film makers and publishers and we’ve learnt a lot! Today we hope to tell you about of some of the highlights of our journey from ignorance to experience and to indulge ourselves by reading some of our own poems for you.

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