I was born on May 14th, 1955 in Owen Sound, Ontario. As it turns out I was the fourth of seven children. My father was a police officer, who served as Chief of Police in Owen Sound from 1974 to 1981. My mother was a housewife, as women who ran the household were called in those days. Not busy enough with her own brood, she ran a day care from home. While I was growing up, my parents also took in over one hundred foster kids for the Childrens’ Aid Society.

I first trod the boards in Sunday school pageants and school assemblies, playing a variety of shepherds and elves. Also, to the annoyance of many a teacher, I was class clown. Really bitten by the acting bug, in highschool I performed, among others: Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace, and Charlie Sloan in Anne of Green Gables. I later attended Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and there performed in seventeen productions, graduating in 1979 with a BA in Drama. After graduation, I worked at Press Theatre for one and a half seasons, first as the sound man and then as a lighting technician.

For the next year and a half, I found myself wandering the breadth of Canada. I stopped for a time in Victoria, BC, then Quebec City, before settling in Prince Edward Island in 1982. There, I worked as an actor, playwright, director and technician. In 1985 I joined forces with Laurel Smyth and formed theatre after all… We often collaborated with David Bennett, Paul Broadbent and Eugene Sauve. Between us we produced a dozen shows over the next seven years. These included Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna, and original productions such as Classic Cases, The Missing Fixed Link, All the Trimmings, Island Smoke and my one man show Speed Limit

From 1986-92, I held the position of role play coordinator at the Atlantic Police Academy in Charlottetown. I also worked five seasons at the Charlottetown Festival, appearing in ten productions, including Lorne Elliott’s Culture Shock and Are You Lonesome Tonight?, directed by Walter Learning. As well, I played Mr. Phillips in, once again, Anne of Green Gables. In all, I have portrayed three different characters in over two hundred performances of this Canadian musical icon.

Over my life, I have taken on various jobs between theatre work. As a labourer in a glass plant, a slaughterhouse, a health food store, as a roofer, telephone interviewer, tobacco picker, painter, building superintendent, foot and bicycle courier and as a nude model for life drawing classes. I have always been physically active, involved in many sports, most notably ice hockey, frisbee, cycling and cross country skiing. I have also run two marathons, 1981 in Vancouver and 1983 in Ottawa. Though I wasn’t in the top of the pack, I can proudly say I finished both of them, the first in freezing drizzle and the second in extreme humidity.

Since moving to Toronto in 1992, I have participated in seven seasons of the Fringe Festival. These included 2004’s The Blood of A Coward, for which NOW Magazine ranked my portrayal of Charles Bukowski as "one of the outstanding performances of the Festival". In 2005, I received rave reviews for the role of Bob Ewell in To Kill A Mockingbird at Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That same year, I was the only actor in Jamie Dagg’s acclaimed short film, Waiting, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2006, I worked on my first feature film. I played the inscrutable Bone, a killer in Scott Frank’s The Lookout, alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode and Isla Fisher. Shot on the frozen Manitoba prairie, this film garnered much critical praise and is still being discovered by movie buffs. The film’s creator, Mr. Frank, won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. I was delighted to walk the red carpet at The Lookout’s Hollywood premiere in March, 2007.

Currently, I am busy working on a screenplay based on the War of 1812, and live in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto with my cats, Arthur and Guinevere.

                          Being bad and being happy