Joel Varty is CTO of Agility CMS, where he’s spent over 21 years working as a builder of content management platforms, now at the intersection of AI and content infrastructure. Joel is a frequent speaker, blog writer and video content writer. Joel holds a BA in English from the University of Guelph and regularly writes on his long commute to Toronto. Outside of work, he has coached high school football, directed musical theatre, and spent considerable time on stage as an actor and singer. He lives in Port Hope, Ontario with his two kids.

A former newspaper reporter and editor, Janet Richards lives and writes in Belleville. A word lover, art dabbler and stand up comic, Janet has two published poetry collections. In this encore program from the summer of 2014, Janet tells us about her life as a journalist and editor for a small-town newspaper, as well as her debut poetry collection, Glass Skin (Hidden Brook Press) a collection about life in Quinte, documenting the extrordinary in the ordinary.

Mark Richardson is a journalist and author. Based in Cobourg, Mark is the former automotive editor of the Toronto Star and now contributes regularly to Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, among other publications. His books include Zen and Now, Bird on a Wire, The Drive Across Canada, and Running on Empty. This encore program from the summer of 2014 is a conversation about The Drive Across Canada – Mark’s experience driving Canada’s longest road and travel with the adventurous pioneers who helped make it a reality.

Peggy Dymond Leavey made her first programme with Word on the Hills in June 2014. She worked for many years as a librarian in the public library system in Prince Edward County, but once she retired, she had more time for her writing. She is an award-winning and prolific author of middle grade stories and wrote three biographies of important Canadian women, Mary Pickford , Laura Secord and Molly Brant, all for Dundurn Press.

Word on the Hills interviewed Bridget in July 2014. She was an active member of The Cobourg Poetry Workshop and involved in its organization. She gave many readings from her work. Her collection “Niagara Falls Trilogy”, displayed her chief poetic themes. Born and raised on the peninsula her poems concentrate on the minutiae of smalltown life, the relationships and conflicts of adolescence and the changing social history of that region.

Our guest this week is Heidi Croot. This is an encore presentation from 2014. Heidi graduated with an Honours B.A. in English from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, and landed a dream job in corporate communication with IBM Toronto. She followed this line of work in the long-term care, municipal government, and health & safety industries, before hanging a freelance shingle. An award-winning (now mostly escaped) business writer, Heidi has been published in numerous trade publications as a ghostwriter for employers and clients, and under her own byline. She lives with her husband in Ontario’s beautiful Northumberland County, and is working on a memoir.

This week we are replaying an early interview with Ruth Clarke. Ruth is the author of a number of books of nonfiction, but has sometimes used fictional characters as narrators in her historical works. She has also written a field guide to Alderville’s Black Oak Savannah, with biologist and artist Rick Beaver, and Buffers, Boundaries and Barricades, a coffee table book of photographs and musings. Her short stories, memoirs and journalism have been published in anthologies, journals, magazines and newspapers.

This summer we plan to look back over the years to the first programmes we archived in 2014. This week we are rebroadcasting a conversation between Gwynn and Felicity made to introduce themselves to the audience for Word on the Hills. We hope you enjoy it.