Recent Programs

Ken Morden

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Ken Morden has lived in Northumberland County for twenty-five years, moving here, after selling his marketing company in Toronto. He and his wife operated a horse breeding farm in Elizabethville until 2020 when they sold it and moved to a 100 acre country property north of Cobourg, along with their two dogs and no horses. Three years ago Ken decided to develop a new career as a writer and since then has written three books – a Morden family historical novel and two murder mysteries. He is currently working on novels four and five. Ken is active in the arts community currently serving as President of Friends of Music, a director of Spirit of the Hills and a member of the organizing committee for the Northumberland Festival of the Arts.

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Antony di Nardo

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In the final week of Poetry Month for 2022, we welcome Antony di Nardo. Antony has written six books of poetry. His work appears widely in journals and anthologies across Canada and internationally, and has been translated into several languages. He spent the last years of a teaching career in Beirut where he launched his first book of poetry Alien, Correspondent in 2010. He is an active member of the League of Canadian Poets and the Cobourg Poetry Workshop. His latest collection Forget – Sadness – Grass has just been released by Ronsdale Press. The winner of the inaugural Don Gutteridge Poetry Award, Through Yonder Window Breaks will be published shortly by Wet Ink Books

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Kate Rogers

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Kate Rogers’ poetry recently appeared in the “Neighbours” issue of SubTerrain and the following anthologies: Looking Back at Hong Kong (CUHK Press), The Beauty of Being Elsewhere and Dove Tails: Letters from the Self to the World, the 10th Anniversary Writing for Peace Anthology, among other publications. Kate’s essay “The Accident,” appeared in the Spring 2021 Windsor Review. Kate’s reviews have been published in many journals, including; Arc Poetry Magazine, Verse Afire, and in Prism International. Kate volunteers for the League of Canadian Poets and Art Bar, Toronto’s longest running poetry reading series. Her most recent poetry collection is Out of Place, published by Aeolus House/Quattro Books, Toronto, in 2017. Kate re-patriated to Canada in late 2019 after teaching in Hong Kong for two decades.

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Judita Pamfil

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Meet Judita Pamfil. Judita was born in Romania, Transylvania, Cluj of mixed Jewish, Greek. French, Romanian ancestry and grew up playing along two elongated shadows: The communist dictatorship and family accounts of the Holocaust. She studied Art History at the University of Bucharest, worked briefly as a curator at the Fine Arts Museum in Cluj and wrote poetry and prose in Romanian. She left Romania with a husband and baby daughter for Israel and left Israel for Greece as a political refugee. She came to Canada as a landed immigrant where she worked as a curator at Nexus Art Gallery, pursued further studies in Art education and French, and taught art and French with the TDSB. She continued writing poetry and prose but now did it in English. After moving to Port Hope, she self- published Moon Songs; a Selection of Poems

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Jessica Outram

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Our celebration of Poetry Month 2022 begins with interviews with and readings by Jessica Outram, Cobourg’s 4th Poet Laureate. She is a Métis writer and educator with roots in the Georgian Bay Métis Community. She currently works as Principal of Indigenous Education, supporting all schools K-12 in Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. As Poet Laureate, Jessica curates a weekly email series, Poetry Present. Since July 2021, she has also featured a local poet in “Cobourg Now” by sharing one of their poems and writing an accompanying letter in Letter to a Poet. In 2021, Jessica shared monthly prompts and collected poems in an evolving eChapbook, Cobourg Present, that grew in to a 120 pages of poetry featuring 37 poets. Jessica also has a strong presence as a blogger at Sunshine in a Jar and on other social media where she posts among other offerings her engaging photographs taken on her Poetry Walks

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Paddy Scott

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Paddy Scott was born and raised in Trenton, Ontario, the fictionalized version of which provides the setting for his novel, The Union of Smokers. His fiction has appeared in magazines across Canada, has been nominated for Canadian Magazine Awards  and The Journey Prize as well as being a finalist for an Alberta Magazine Award, and longlisted several times for the CBC fiction and poetry prizes. The Union of Smokers, published by Invisible Publishing, was one of 49th Shelf’s books of the year for 2020 and longlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal.

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Pat Butler

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Meet Pat Butler! After many years teaching high school physics and mathematics, Pat joined the world of industry, specializing in writing ironclad manufacturing procedures — think Dove soap. Pat had always found it easier to write non-fiction than to invent a storyline. Following retirement and divorce, she took a Life Stories writing course and published an embellished memoir about her transition from the devastating end of her forty-one-year marriage to the beginning of new marital bliss. Now, with Through Her Opera Glasses, Pat has invented an accompanying narrative to her mother’s found letters, proving that she is just as skilled at inventing storylines as writing training manuals. Pat lives with her husband in Toronto. But from 1986 to 2010 she spent countless weeks at her former cottage east of Brighton, paying frequent visits to Cobourg and PEC.

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Reva Nelson

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Our guest this week is Reva Nelson. She’s from Hamilton, has a degree in Psychology and Education from Western University, and lived in London, Guelph, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and then Toronto before moving to Cobourg almost 6 years ago. Reva has had several careers, as an actor, conference planner, ESL teacher, seminar leader and professional keynote speaker. She was one of the first females in the speaking business, as President of Words.Worth Keynotes & and she spoke across Canada on Positive Risk-taking and Resilience. Reva is the author of 4 books, Risk It!, Bounce Back!, a memoir—Hippie Chick Abroad, and recently, a book of poetry, Twisted Branches. She volunteers for the Art Gallery, the Civic Awards Committee and several Boards. Reva also writes for newspapers and magazines and enjoys the easy access to the lake and nature that Cobourg offers.

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Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy

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This week we interview Abigail Miller and Katie Kennedy who are engaged in the redevelopment of the Northumberland County Archives and Museum at its new location in Cobourg. Abigail Miller is Archivist at the Northumberland County Archives and Museum. She is responsible for building the strategic vision and overseeing operations at NCAM. Abigail holds a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology and Folklore, graduating from Memorial University and the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College.

Katie Kennedy is Curator for NCAM, focused on authentic community collaborations. Katie graduated from University of Ottawa with a BA in Classical Studies and was educated in the university’s Museum of Classical Antiquities. Katie is currently enrolled in the Ontario Museum Association’s Certificate in Museum Studies and is a participant in the OMA Conference Mentorship program. Please join us to find out more about this exciting project.

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Ronald MacKay

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Ronald Mackay visits with us again to catch us up on his most recent work. Ronald spent his earliest years in his grandmother’s home in rural Scotland in the 1940s. Like most folks in that region, he spoke both Scots and English and intuitively learned when it was appropriate to use one or the other. He was educated first at the Morgan Academy in Dundee and later, at both Aberdeen and Edinburgh universities. He was awarded a doctorate by l’ Université de Montréal for his educational research in the Northwest Territories. Like many Scots, he has made a career in countries far from his native home. He undertook development projects in education and agriculture, in many parts of the world, and has farmed in the UK, the Canary Islands, Mexico, Canada, Chile and Argentina. In 2012, he turned to more creative writing when he and his wife, Viviana, returned to Canada from Argentina. 

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