International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA): Three-day ‘Wide World of Sales Conference’ kicks off Jan. 14 at Bally’s & Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

Scanning the conference program for the three-day International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) “Wide World of Sales Conference” running from Jan. 14-16 at Bally’s & Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, billed by its promoters as the “only sales and marketing conference for end-of-life professionals,” one is quickly brought to the realization that the funeral business is first and foremost just that; a business. And secondly, its conference format and focus doesn’t look so very different than the dozens of such events I used to attend for lawyers, judges, law students and law professors back when I was chief writer for Ontario Lawyers Weekly (now The Lawyers Weekly) in Toronto.

The ICCFA is chalk full of trade ideas on how to better utilize “death business management software” and the conference features motivational speakers, such as Anthony Iannarino, CEO of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy in Columbus, Ohio, and Gary O’Sullivan, of The Gary O’Sullivan Company in Winter Garden, Florida, who will be holding a 90-minute “fireside chat” from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday for arriving conference attendees. Apparently the members of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association involved in sales very much like what O’Sullivan has to say because he was recognized as their speaker of the decade in 2000 – and then again, for an unprecedented second time, in 2010.

While there is nothing surprising about any of this, I can’t help recalling the late Jessica Mitford’s 1963 landmark investigative journalism in her best-selling book, The American Way of Death, an expose of abuses in the early 1960s funeral home industry in the United States, which was still being read by aspiring journalists 20 years later when I was in journalism school. Feeling that death had become much too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, above all, excessively expensive, Mitford documents the ways in which, she argued, funeral directors took advantage of the shock and grief of friends and relatives of loved ones to convince them to pay far more than necessary for the funeral and other services. Mitford died at the age of 78 in July 1996, but shortly before her death she had completed The American Way of Death Revisited, which was published posthumously in 1998. Mitford, in keeping with her wishes, was cremated in an inexpensive funeral by Pacific Interment Service in San Francisco at a total cost reportedly of $533.31.

The Sterling, Virginia-based International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association is the only international trade association representing all segments of the cemetery, funeral service, cremation and memorialization industry.

“Founded in 1887 as the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents,” according to the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association’s website, “the organization was created by a group of 18 cemeterians whose goal was to improve the appearance and operations of their properties. Throughout its first century of operation, the association grew in size and mission and underwent several name changes, but it remained a national cemetery-only organization. In 1996, the association became the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, expanding its membership to include funeral homes and other related businesses and extending its reach beyond U.S. borders. In 2007, ‘Cremation’ was added to the name to more accurately reflect the operations and goals of its membership.”

Today, the ICCFA is composed of more than 7,500 cemeteries, funeral homes, crematories, memorial designers and related businesses worldwide.

One of the hot topics trending in the funeral industry for 2015, experts predict, will be death DNA. CD Funeral News ConnectingDirectors.com , a Zanesville, Ohio-based online publication for funeral professionals, published by Ryan Thogmartin, who also owns DISRUPT Media, asked in a Dec. 21 post, “Consumers are having discussions daily about DNA, how is your funeral home addressing this emerging subject? The piece by Terri Sullivan, an Emmy Award winning anchor-reporter at ABC 6/Fox 28 in Columbus, Ohio, opened with “a” local funeral home is helping central Ohio families cope with the loss of a loved one by saving a bit of the past for the future. In some cases it could be lifesaving. It’s called a DNA memorial.

“Schoedinger Funeral And Cremation Service has offered it for about a month. A swab is used to collect cells from inside the mouth, which, along with a snippet of hair, is sent off to a lab for processing.

“I think one of the big reasons people are starting to do this is the technology continues to evolve every year on what we can do with genes and dna genetics and so forth,” said Michael Schoedinger. “And what we’re learning is the cremation rate is approaching 50 per cent. Once a person’s been cremated, we can’t reverse the process and collect their DNA. It’s destroyed forever … Schoedinger said the reasons people opt for the service vary. Some use to it determine their risk of disease or certain medical conditions, others want to know more about their family history.

“Schoedinger says in many ways it’s a gift from the past to future generations.” You can read the complete article here at: http://connectingdirectors.com/articles/45459-millions-of-consumers-are-having-this-conversation-is-your-firm-taking-part

“The relevance of DNA to funeral consumers (because we are destroying the DNA of deceased people when we cremate) will continue to emerge as a subject of importance,” Jeff Harbeson of the Roanoke, Virginia area wrote Jan. 1 in a post in The Funeral Commander, his widely followed industry blog. “Will 2015 be the first year a family will sue a funeral home for destroying their loved ones genetic record without telling them?” Harbeson asks. You can read the complete post here at: http://thefuneralcommander.com/2015/01/01/funeral-industry-2014-in-the-rear-view-mirror-2015-in-the-windshield/

Harbeson, who retired from the U.S. military as a captain, got his start in the funeral industry in January 2004 with as a sales consultant with Batesville Casket Company of Batesville, Indiana. He founded The Harbeson Group in January 2010 and was the co-founder of Family Choice Funerals & Cremations in November 2009.

And in a Canadian connection to the death retrieval DNA trend, Harbeson, although not a scientist, was named president last July of CG Labs Inc. in Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario, founded by its chief scientist, Ryan Lehto, who graduated from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay with a BSc. and in biology and MSc. in molecular biology with a specialization in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) research. Lehto used to work for the university. Harbeson, also a company director, is on board for his specialized marketing experience. As well as the funeral industry, CG Labs, which is based in the McKellar LifeCentre on South Archibald Street, offers expert opinion and services in areas including mass disaster identification; film and television projects; cold case unsolved mysteries (CG Labs once purchased some of Al Capone’s hair at an auction and were able to extract the DNA. It now hangs on the wall, a framed exhibit, so to speak); archaeological sites; and aboriginal land claims.

Last September, CG Labs Inc. began marketing their Secure My DNA brand “to consumers in non-post death situations.” You can watch a 2m6sec YouTube clip called SecureMyDNA here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GCj6Y82VnY

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Spare change and anonymous generosity: Red Salvation Army Christmas Kettles sometimes see gold, as in South African Krugerrand and Saint Gaudens double eagle gold U.S. $20 Liberty coins that is, along with diamond and sapphire rings

While the Salvation Army has been without a pastor in Thompson, Manitoba since last June when Major Betty-Lou Topping,  who had arrived in town in July 2012, was transferred back to Newfoundland after less than two years here, that hasn’t stopped ministry directors Roy and Rose Bladen, also originally from Newfoundland, and who arrived last July, from mounting an ambitious Salvation Army Thompson Corps Christmas Red Kettle charitable campaign with a goal of $40,000 in donations. That’s  less than the more than $50,000 collected last year but well above the less than $12,000 donated in 2011 in Thompson.

The Bladens are maintaining a Salvation Army presence in Thompson (the Salvation Army has  been here for 51 years.) The Thompson Corps belongs to the Prairie Division of The Salvation Army’s Canada and Bermuda Territory. Traditionally, The Salvation Army announces new appointments on an annual basis in April to take effect in late June, although there are exceptions.

Salvation Army pastors, who are known by their officer rank, such as captain or major, etc., among their other duties, conduct the Sunday morning service, which is known as the “holiness meeting,” where they preach and teach on holiness. The Sunday evening service, which they lead, is known as the “salvation meeting.”

William Booth founded The Salvation Army in London, England in 1865 on the concept of “soup, soap and salvation.” Booth’s vision was to share the gospel of Jesus Christ while affecting social change to improve life for England’s poor. “A heart for God, a hand to man,” said Booth.

The Salvation Army’s war cry is “Blood and Fire.” Anyone who has ever spent time sitting in a criminal court, or walked through the doors of a Salvation Army Harbour Light residential dependency treatment facility to attend a Narcotics Anonymous 12-step meeting, knows the Army – unabashedly and unreservedly evangelical Christian – walk the walk, as well as talk the talk. If you doubt that, ask the guys at any Harbour Light. You can’t “con a con,” as the saying goes.

Today, The Salvation Army, which came to Canada in 1882 and to Winnipeg on Dec. 12, 1886, is the largest non-governmental, non-profit provider of social services in Canada.

The Salvation Army red kettles have been used for more than a century to collect donations since being started by Capt. Joseph McFee in San Francisco in December 1891. According to The Salvation Army records, the first kettle usage recorded in Canada was in St. John’s in 1906.

Kettles are located in City Centre Mall, outside Canada Safeway and Wal-Mart,entrances, inside  the MLCC Liquor Mart on Selkirk Avenue, at Thompson Family Foods in the Thompson Plaza  and at Shopper’s Drug Mart on Selkirk Avenue in the Burntwood Plaza through Christmas Eve.

While most of what is dropped into the kettles is paper money and loose coin change, Mexican pesos, Canadian Tire money and gift certificates have also been dropped in the kettles in Canada over the years. The Salvation Army kettles in the United States and Canada have also famously had unusually valuable and sentimental donations deposited over Christmas seasons past. Two Spokane, Washington-area Red Kettle drives received such surprise donations in 2011.

Inside one kettle, volunteers found a note wrapped around a coin. The note said, “I’ve saved this ounce of silver for twenty years, I’m unemployed for 13 months, my house is in foreclosure, I’m filing for bankruptcy and at 61 my retirement is shot but I still know there are families in worse shape.” The coin had an estimated value of$30 but The Salvation Army said it believed the message it shared is worth much more. They also received a diamond ring wrapped in a dollar bill from an anonymous donor in the Spokane area. The ring was valued at $5,000.

The Salvation Army of Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago, has been receiving anonymous South African Krugerrand gold coin donations for at least the past five or six  years. The coins are usually wrapped in a dollar bill and go unnoticed until the kettles are counted at the end of the evening. The gold coins Krugerrands were valued at about $1,800 a piece in 2012. With the fluctuating price of gold, they would be worth about $1,254 each today.

Similar extraordinary donations have happened in Alberta. The Salvation Army bell-ringers in Brooks, a community of 13,000 people east of Calgary, discovered a solid gold coin wrapped in a $5 bill, with a note explaining the coin was worth $1,700, in December 2011. Two years earlier, in December 2009, someone dropped a gold coin worth about $1,200 into a kettle at Crossiron Mills, just north of Calgary.

Last year marked the ninth consecutive year  a $20 Saint Gaudens double eagle gold U.S. Liberty coin, the one donated last year minted in 1925, has been anonymously donated in a Salvation Army kettle in or around Fort Myers, Florida. The coin is always accompanied by a note, “In loving memory of Mimi.” The value of the donation fluctuate with the price of gold but the coin was worth $1,300 last year.

A diamond and sapphire ring, worth $2,000 U.S., was dropped into a Salvation Army kettle in a Miami suburb in 2011, along with a note saying: “They need more than I. Do good! A Friend.” The ring was tucked inside a $50 U.S. bill.

Another anonymous donor dropped a 3/4-carat diamond ring, also valued at $2,000 U.S., in a kettle outside a Wal-Mart store in a suburb of Kansas City in December 2011.

Scrutiny is the price religious –­ or indeed any type of charity must be prepared to pay –  for the privilege of soliciting our dollars. On average, 87 cents of every dollar donated to the Salvation Army is used directly in charitable activities – exceeding the Canada Revenue Agency guideline of 80 per cent donation efficiency. The Salvation Army says they “strive to meet the needs of vulnerable groups and those overlooked or ignored in our communities. We make no distinction based on ethnicity or sexual orientation.”

Those of us who are adherents of any of the world’s three largest monotheistic religions – Christianity, Judaism or Islam  are charged with the injunction to feed the poor.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton got it right in his first inaugural address Jan. 20, 1993 when he said, ” we recognize a simple but powerful truth – we need each other. And we must care for one another.” He went on to say, we are “tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate, we – the fortunate and the unfortunate – might have been each other.”

As you warm up to that idea, you might want to take a look at this 2:22 YouTube trailer for the Pure Flix Entertainment movie Silver Bells, released in October 2013, directed by Harold Cronk, and starring Bruce Boxleitner as an ambitious, gung-ho father and local TV sports anchor who approaches the holidays much like he approaches life – competitively.

At Christmas, he wants his interior designing wife Piper (Bridgett Newton) to win the neighborhood’s annual holiday house decorating contest.  He wants his son Jason (Kenton Duty) to be the winning basketball player on his high school team.  And of course, he wants everyone in the family – including daughter Kasey (Laura Spencer), who is in her first year of law school – to win by securing the biggest Black Friday shopping deals before dawn.

But when Bruce gets into a scuffle with a ref (Kevin Downes) at Jason’s basketball game, the holidays take a turn for the worse.  In no time, the video goes viral.  Bruce is sued and then suspended from the anchor desk, and sentenced to community service with … you guessed it, The Salvation Army.

You can see the official trailer for Silver Bells here it here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ook8i7H7250

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

The friendship of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and St. Louis Jesuit priest Father Ed Dowling, who helped to convert American Newspaper Guild founder and union activist Heywood Broun to Catholicism

Bill Wilson, left, and Father Ed Dowling, right

Dr. Bob Smith, left, and Heywood Broun, right

The entire 12-step movement, which now totals more than 100 self-help fellowships, can be traced back to two men originally from Vermont, Bill Wilson, a failed New York City stockbroker, and Dr. Bob Smith, an Akron, Ohio physician.

The birth of Alcoholics Anonymous is dated from their meeting and Smith’s last bottle of beer on June 10, 1935. They would be affectionately known ever after as Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the co-founders of AA.

Wilson had been influenced by Ebby Thacher – or Ebby T. in the preferred anonymous parlance of 12-step programs – a friend from boarding school, who paid Wilson a visit in November 1934, while Thacher was a member of the Oxford Group, popular on college campuses in the 1920s, and founded by Frank Buchman, a Lutheran minister.

The first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, known almost universally by its informal title as simply the Big Book, was published on April 10, 1939. There were 4,730 books printed, with red cloth binding, wide columns, thick paper (which was why it was called the Big Book in the first place), and a red, yellow, black and white dust jacket, which came to be known as the “circus cover.”

Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA as it is also known, has long had an impact on the larger culture and its perhaps most famous slogan, “one day at a time,” long ago entered the public vocabulary as a sentiment to remind people feeling overwhelmed by events to pause for a moment, step back and see their lives in the present moment, not the past or future, which  has made the concept of the current 24 hours – and in a crisis sometimes even smaller units of time – a cornerstone of AA.

Wilson’s spiritual advisor and “sponsor”  for almost 20 years from November 1940 until his death in April 1960 was a Jesuit priest, Father Ed Dowling, from St. Louis.

Dowling was born in St. Louis on Sept. 1, 1898. He attended the Baden Public and the Holy Name Parochial School and went on to St. Louis University High School. In 1918, he served as a private in the First World War. In 1919, he began working as a reporter on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Later that same year, Dowling entered the Order at Florissant and followed the regular course subsequently for philosophy at St. Louis University.

Dowling was a member of the American Newspaper Guild and served as a delegate for the St. Louis local at Guild conventions in Toronto and San Francisco. He was a friend of Heywood Broun, the noted New York columnist, Guild founder and legendary union activist, and helped, along with then Father Fulton J. Sheen, to convert Broun from agnosticism to Catholicism seven months before his death in 1939.

When he decided to become a priest, Dowling reportedly told his newspaper colleagues he was entering the seminary –  the very next morning –  at an all-night cafe frequented by Globe-Democrat reporters.

Dowling’s regency from 1926 to 1929 was spent at Loyola Academy in Chicago. He was ordained in 1931 by Archbishop John Joseph Glennon of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, who was elevated to be a cardinal shortly before his death in 1946.

On a cold and rainy November night in 1940, Dowling showed up at 10 p.m. unannounced at Bill Wilson’s apartment above AA’s Twenty-Fourth Street Club in New York City.

“I’m Father Ed Dowling from St. Louis,” he said. “A Jesuit friend and I have been struck by the similarity of the AA twelve steps and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.”

Dowling would become the first American Catholic clergyman to prominently endorse AA, both in later revised editions of the Big Book, and in 1947 in The Queen’s Work, a magazine published by the Central Office of Sodalities of Our Lady.

When Dowling, as one of the originators, helped start Couples Are Not Alone (CANA), a national Catholic movement for married couples in 1942,  he borrowed heavily, he told Wilson, from AA’s 12 steps to help participants deal with mental difficulties, scruples and sexual compulsions.

As a guest speaker at AA’s St. Louis International Convention in Kiel Auditorium in 1955,  Dowling remarked: “There is a negative approach from agnosticism. This was the approach of Peter the Apostle. ‘Lord, to whom shall we go’?” I doubt if there is anybody in this hall who really ever sought sobriety. I think we were trying to get away from drunkenness. I don’t think we should despise the negative. I have a feeling that if I ever find myself in heaven, it will be from backing away from hell.”

Dowling died peacefully in his sleep in Memphis on April 3, 1960.

It has has been customary across Canada during the third week in November since 1981, which begins Sunday, Nov. 16 this year, to mark National Addictions Awareness Week and all its variants such as National Aboriginal Addictions Awareness Week and Manitoba Addictions Awareness Week (MAAW).

The federal government in 1987 first proclaimed the week. Approximately 600,000 people take part in NAAW activities throughout the country.

Much of the early work was conceptualized and developed in St. Albert, Alberta at the Nechi Training, Research & Health Promotions Institute, which is housed with Poundmaker’s Lodge, known as Canada’s first addictions treatment centre specifically for aboriginal clients.

Damian Thompson, associate editor at The Spectator in London, specializing in religion and classical music, published a book in May 2012 called, The Fix: How Addiction Is Invading our Lives and Taking Over Your World, in which he argues addictions to iPhones, painkillers, cupcakes, alcohol and Internet pornography – to name just a few – are taking over our lives. Our most casual daily habits can quickly become obsessions that move beyond our control, Thompson argued, suggesting that human desire is in the process of being reshaped.

“Already, the distinction between ‘addicts’ and ordinary people is far less clear than it was even 20 years ago, Thompson wrote in a May 28, 2012 piece for the Daily Telegraph in London, where he was editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist at the time, headlined, “Addiction: the coming epidemic,” with the “line between consumption, habit and addiction is becoming dangerously blurred The difference between old-fashioned porn and Internet porn is a bit like the difference between wine and spirits. After hundreds of years as a mild intoxicant, erotica has undergone a sudden distillation. Digital porn is the equivalent of cheap gin in Georgian England: a reliable if unhygienic hit that relieves misery and boredom. And, unlike the old ‘dirty mags,’ it is available in limitless quantities.”

Whether addiction is a disease, in the true medical sense of the word (Thompson argued it is not), a cognitive behavioural problem, or self-destructive habits borne out of poor choices, but choices nonetheless, is an ongoing debate, and while interesting, is of secondary importance. Whatever addiction is or isn’t, few would argue that it doesn’t affect entire families – and even communities – across all generational, ethnic, racial and class distinctions.

Addiction, be it to alcohol or other drugs, gambling, Internet pornography, etc., is an equal opportunity destroyer of lives. While the addict or the alcoholic may be the most obvious casualty, the collateral damage is all around them.

While it’s impossible to overstate the influence of Alcoholics Anonymous and related 12-step programs on addictions treatment and recovery, it’s not the only model in a reality where relapse is the norm.

Two steps forward, one step backwards and perhaps a step sideways is the reality of addiction.

Bill Wilson himself  was a surprisingly freethinker on a lot of this, refusing often to get bogged down in the semantics. AA worked for him, so he worked his program with a live-and-let live attitude.

FundAid: ‘Community Crowdfunding Division of Glacier Media’ arrives in Thompson, Manitoba

Thompson Citizen readers got their first glimpse today of FundAid, a new initiative by the “Community Crowdfunding Division of Glacier Media” in Vancouver to  tap into a new revenue stream from groups and individuals looking to raise money for things ranging from “a friend or relative who is facing financial hardship because of an illness or accident” to “paying for equipment or travel costs for your sports team” to  creating “a lasting legacy through a memorial fund” or how about celebrating” your birthday or retirement by asking for donations to your favourite charity.” The Wednesday Thompson Citizen and Friday Nickel Belt News are owned by GVIC Communications Corp. of Vancouver’s Glacier Media Group.

FundAid has partnered with FundRazr, another Vancouver-based company that recently won the City of Vancouver Excellence Award for small technology companies, to provide the dynamic platform to power its venture into crowdfunding.

While the contributors to fundraising campaigns are not required to pay FundAid a fee, recipients of the money raised normally pay a  a seven per cent FundAid fee, plus a payment provider fee of 2.9 per cent, plus $0.30 cents per transaction.  According to its corporate website, FundRazr has a similar operational structure, although its FundRazr fee is listed as five per cent rather than seven per cent. Its payment provider fee of 2.9 per cent, plus $0.30 cents per transaction, however, is identical to Glacier’s FundAid. No word on exactly how the two companies are divvying up their share of the fundraising pie between themselves as they work together. FundRazr also notes “contributors have an option to cover the fee to give 100 per cent of donations to recipients.”

In the case of Glacier’s FundAid roll-out today at its community papers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Martha Perkins, executive director at FundAid in Vancouver, told readers both FundAid and FundRazr have “waived the service fees as their contribution to the campaign” because the crowdfunding effort, “We Stand On Guard for Cpl. Nathan Cirillo’s Son,”  is for Marcus, the five-year-old son of Cirillo, the 24-year-old reservist from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada (Princess Louise’s) in Hamilton, Ontario, shot and killed Oct. 22 in Ottawa by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau while taking part in an honour guard at the Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial in Confederation Square. One of Perkins’ tasks with FundAid is to work with  newspapers and individuals to facilitate campaigns, enhance a campaign’s success and engage potential donors through social media. As of 10 p.m. CDT Oct. 29, FundAid had raised $3,595 for the Cirillo campaign from a total of 83 contributors over six days.

Indiegogo, another crowdfunding company from San Francisco, through its “Fund 4 Officer P Vincent & Cpl N Cirillo” has also been raising money for  Cirillo’s son, and the family of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, 53, who died in hospital Oct. 20 after hit-and-run driver Martin Couture Rouleau aimed his vehicle at two members of the Canadian Armed Forces, who were on foot in a strip mall parking lot, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, located about 50 kilometres southeast of Montreal. The other soldier suffered minor injuries. The Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign which closes at 11:59 PDT Oct. 29, had raised $397,119 as of 10 p.m. CDT Oct. 29 from 3,430 contributors and was at 397 per cent of its $100,000 goal. With $650,000 committed, it set a new goal of $750,000.

As with most of its new initiatives, Glacier Media Group launched FundAid close to home, in this case in early July, starting in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, telling readers that “every week we will be advertising FundAid in our community newspapers: the Vancouver Courier, WE Vancouver, North Shore News, Surrey Now, Langley Advance, Delta Optimist, Richmond News, Burnaby Now, Royal City Record, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times, Tri-Cities Now and Bowen Island Undercurrent.

“These ads will sometimes promote specific campaigns but will also draw attention to FundAid:

•  editors will be told of any campaign that might be of interest their readers;
•   when newspapers write about a campaign, a “donate now” widget will be embedded in the online version;
•   every newspaper will host FundAid campaigns on their websites;
•   our sales staff can approach businesses who might want to get involved by offering perks or      sponsoring a campaign.”

While the Thompson Citizen online and print story Oct. 29 simply identified her by the byline “Martha Perkins,” the executive director of FundAid in Vancouver is a  well known former community newspaper editor, particularly in Southern Ontario, where she won  numerous  writing and photography awards from the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspaper Association during her long tenure with The Haliburton County Echo and Minden Times. She started out as a reporter at the Haliburton County Echo in September 1985 and was named editor in 1989. She later became editor of several of its  sister papers, including the Minden Times, Bancroft This Week and Barry’s Bay This Week, editing the papers until October 2009.

She started working for Glacier in November 2009 as managing editor of the Bowen Island Undercurrent on Bowen Island, British Columbia. She also worked for Glacier at the North Shore Outlook in North Vancouver and the Westender  (WE Vancouver).

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