I AM A CREATOR

As a child, when I wasn't outside collecting things like frogs, snakes, tadpoles and moss, I was making things. I had Barbie dolls but not the accessories, so I made my own. I made their clothes using my mother's sewing machine, turning the wheel by hand because my mother was afraid I would stitch my fingers. I made furniture and I made a house for them. I also talked my parents into getting me the Barbie hairstyle heads and extras so I could create cool hairstyles. I was not into the dolls as much as I was into making things for them to use.

I learnt how to sew, crochet, and knit. By Junior High, I was making own clothes. One time, I crocheted myself a bikini using cotton yarn. It looked great until I jumped in the water and the whole thing got so waterlogged it just basically fell right off of me. A fourteen year old girl naked in a swimming pool is not a good thing for said fourteen year old girl, and navigating to the bottom of the pool to collect one's bathing suit and try to get it back on wasn't that easy. But I survived to continue my creating of things!

Needless to say, if you haven't guessed already, I went to art school. [Ontario College of Art and Design](https://www.ocadu.ca/) to be exact. I was in the Experimental Arts department, where I did mostly video art, photography, sound art, performance art and installations. This was before the digital age, before desktop computers and certainly before the internet. I did very well, I won awards, my videos were shown throughout the world but I never got to go with them, plus I only got paid $50 per show. Here is a piece of advice from me - if you want to make a lot of money, do not become an artist.

When personal computers first came out I bought my first one - an Amiga of course being an artist and all. I think it was around 1989. I remember opening the box and while reading the instructions on how to work it, my son came in and just started using it, as I sat there scratching my head. From there on, things moved quickly. Of course my next computer was a Mac. I wish I had kept it because it was the first Mac "laptop", and it's probably worth a lot today. Plus it only weighed a mere 16 pounds or just over 7 kilos and the screen was extremely small. But I sure loved it.

Soon I learnt Photoshop, which I still haven't mastered, and I learnt how to edit digitally using an Avid. This was a good thing to know at the time because I actually got a "job" editing at a documentary film company called Associated Producers in Toronto. I worked my way up to director. The film I worked on called "The Dancing Game" got me some Gemini nominations for best film, best director and best editing. The best part though, was that I got to travel while creating things (I forgot to mention that I love to travel and have travelled to many places around the world).

Then, in 2004, we decided to do something completely different. We moved to Salt Spring Island, British Columbia and started growing Cannabis. We were still making films, but eventually all we did was grow Cannabis. We moved into Cannabis activism as well and are trying to come to terms with Canada's idea of "legalization", which as far as I'm concerned is really prohibition 2.0.

Keeping in tune with using my creativity, I started making a special Cannabis infused product for women, called Bliss. I created the actual product, the packaging, and the website. Bliss was featured in Chatelaine magazine and has also won an award for best sex lubricant!