In the eighties I joined J. Walter Thompson as head of their PC Support & Analysis Department where I provided applications development and support to nearly two hundred users across Canada. When the department was out-sourced in 1992 I took technical-writing contracts from companies like DeBeers and Command Data.

From its second issue, I was Assignment Editor for The Outrider, Ontario's first newspaper for the homeless. There I worked and learned from Rod Goodman (retired editor and ombudsman from the Toronto Star) and Janice Hayes (news copy editor from The Globe and Mail).

During this time I wrote a column entitled "Ad Nauseam" which, under the banner of advertising review, satirized media and politics.

The Outrider folded in a relatively public fashion, and Lee Oliver tells the story with much relish (and some accuracy) in The Ryerson Review of Journalism Spring, 1995.

Following the demise of The Outrider I returned to the University of Toronto as a part-time student where I spent the next 6 years earning my Honours BA as an English Specialist.

During most of this time I worked as Senior Staff Writer at the popular niche magazine, What's On Queen where my duties included:

• Ongoing columns like "Queen Street History" and "Bookstores on Queen;"

• Regular coverage of Queen Street art, (Robert Berlin, Menno Krant, Milton Jewell, Dorothy Cameron),

• Regular coverage of Queen Street events (Caribana, Word On the Street, Beaches Studio Tour),

• Regular coverage of Queen Street theatre (Michael Hollingsworth, Linda Griffiths),

• Seasonal items such as our annual quest for Queen Street's best cafe (over 16 cafes visited, from one end of Queen to the other, in the course of eight hours),

• Christmas gift guides from a curmudgeon, and the yearly Halloween adventure.

• Satirical pieces as needed.

I also co-founded the prestigious Celtic Curmudgeon: Arts & Entertainment Review through which I began my association with the Canadian Bookseller's Association's (CBA) trade show, an association which continues to this day, meeting with various publishing representatives, sifting through their offerings for titles of interest to my readership, and interviewing visiting authors like Ian Rankin, Maeve Binchy and Colin Wilson.

This picture is from the 2001 Canadian Booksellers' Association Trade Show. In the centre is Tatiana helping to promote Eric Walters' newest "Tiger" book, Tiger by the Tail. That's Eric on the right dressed in black, and Vernon, Tatiana's trainer, in white on the left. In the centre is my lovely wife and co-editor Barbara, and myself with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

Curmudgeon folded in 2000 and I ended my relationship with What's On Queen when offered the position of Managing Editor for the Circa2000 Time Capsule. This was an interesting experiment in archiving various unusual and interesting Web sites, accompanied by an online magazine with articles featuring topics of Web-related interest. Unfortunately, a year later the publisher disappeared and despite my last-minute efforts to keep the site going on my own, it folded.

In 1998 for What's On Queen (and again in 1999 for Celtic Curmudgeon) I wrote of the the mysterious, and morbidly humorous, disappearance of John Sheridan Hogan, a controversial Toronto MPP in 1859.

This story, which includes the exploits of the Brookes' Bush Gang, a particularly inept group of thieves and ruffians, caught the attention of Liz Bozma-Donovan of the Riverdale Community Business Association, and through her, the Toronto Heritage Society which asked me to host two Heritage Walks in the Summer of 1999. Since then two publishers have expressed interest in publishing the book upon completion. The research, however, is long and involved and the project won't likely be finished for another couple of years.