I had always drawn. After leaving GDHS in 1965, I went to work at Provincial Paper in Georgetown, where I learned and earned a work ethic. Sheridan College opened in 1967, and my modest high school portfolio secured a desk for me in the first Graphic Design and Fine Art program. A clerical error blocked me from the Fine Art option in my second year and I was slotted into the new Animation option. I wasn’t a cartoonist! I was a fine artist. Reluctantly, I participated in the Animation classes. Upon seeing my first stack of crude drawings projected onto a screen, I was hooked. I graduated twice from Sheridan, from Graphic Design in 1969 and Animation in 1970, both times with honours.
I moved to Toronto. Videoart Productions, my first interview, hired me as their Animation Director right out of college. I hired a few Sheridan grads and for the next five years we did television commercials and TVO series work. In 1976, we self-produced a short film, “Symbiosis”, a three minute allegory, loosely based on the eviction plight of the Toronto Island residents. Dale married me that year and we spent our honeymoon at the first Ottawa International Animated Film Festival. Symbiosis won the “short film” category and traveled the world film festival circuit. It was invited to compete at the Academy Awards. My U.S. distributor didn’t get it there in time.
In 1978, Dale and I were both working at different animation companies in Toronto. We pondered moving from our apartment and buying a house. We had discussed buying in King City (close to Toronto), Atlanta (burgeoning community), or Monaco (tax free and eager to support cultural enterprise). While visiting my folks in Georgetown one day, we saw and fell in love with a house in Glen Williams. We bought it. We commuted into Toronto for a few years.
In 1982, we did the first animated personal Christmas card, a thirty second film which we delivered to friends and family via advertising time on CITY TV. This time, We arranged to qualify it for the Academy Awards and we are told that it was selected in the final ten short animated films in the world, but was disqualified because someone thought it was a commercial.
Most of 1983 we lived in Japan, as animation directors on the animated series “Inspector Gadget” . I learned to speak Japanese like a 6 year old local, enough to get around in a cab and order lunch.
Back in Canada, we have continued to work on TV series and feature length films, including Care Bears, My Pet Monster, Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour, Rupert Bear, The Neverending Story, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Magic School Bus, Franklin Turtle, Little Bear, Babar the Elephant, and many, many more. I have worked on two Emmy award winning TV series, Beetlejuice and Rolie Polie Olie.
We continue to do the work we love and must settle with collecting Fine Art as a hobby.
…………………… and so it goes.