Provincial Director-at-Large Candidates

Originally from Southern Ontario, I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in urban, rural and remote areas around the province. I appreciate the challenges and opportunities experienced by anglers and hunters throughout different regions. My love for the outdoors and conservation started as a young child with camping and fishing from canoe, and grew to include small game and waterfowl hunting primarily through falconry. I have worked in the environmental sector for the past 20 years in the fields of education, conservation, wildlife and program management, and hold a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies (Hons) from the University of Waterloo. I have volunteered for the OFAH since 2015 on advisory committees and have been successively elected as a director. I currently chair the Small Game, Migratory Birds & Wetlands Advisory Committee. Encouraging involvement and representation of the diversity of OFAH members, particularly women and youth, remains a priority, and I have worked closely with OFAH staff in the creation and launch of the new NXT-GEN initiative in my capacity of Provincial Director-at-Large.

I am an avid hunter and angler. I pursued a career as a biologist and completed an Honours Degree at Carleton and a PhD at Queen’s. My PhD work was on arctic nesting snow geese looking at the ecology and genetics of body size. My career with the MNRF included district biologist in Moosonee, senior regional wildlife biologist in Cochrane, and Boreal science manager in Timmins. In 1998 I moved to Peterborough as the head of the MNRF Wildlife Research Section, providing the research support needed to help develop MNRF’s wildlife management policies. I also supervised over 40 graduate students during my career and did research on a variety of topics including wildlife disease, waterfowl, moose, caribou, wetlands, wolves, elk, bears and upland game. I retired from the MNRF in 2017. For the past two years I have been actively involved as an OFAH Director providing science advice to the OFAH Big Game and Small Game Advisory Committees. I look forward to increasing my involvement in other areas of the OFAH into the future.

You obviously care deeply about the future of our favorite activities. Be it hunting, fishing, trapping, or shooting sports to improve your skills, the future of those activities needs competent, capable people fighting to keep you doing what you love. You want someone who will listen, respond, and take action on your behalf when it really matters. For those who know me, you know my record over the years speaks for itself and I look forward to continuing to speak for you in this role. My experience is broad, and you know that with the challenging future we must aggressively push for the protection of rights and to maximize opportunities. We need to be alert, speak loudly, proudly, and build on our collective wins rather than accepting compromise while detractors work to remove access, opportunity, and the future of our next generations. Thank you for your support!

I have served as an OFAH Provincial Director-at-Large since March 2014. During this time, I have acted as chair of the OFAH Sporting Dogs Advisory Committee. We have achieved success with the introduction by Garmin of a legal GPS Tracking System in Canada and the legalization in 2017 to use leashed unlicensed blood tracking dogs to recover deer and moose. In 2020, we developed an informational pamphlet on the Code of Conduct for Hunting with Dogs. I’m also a member of the OFAH Agricultural Liaison Committee.

I have been a member of the Dufferin Northern Peel Anglers and Hunters since 1972 and am a member of the Ontario Sporting Dog Association. I am a retired veterinarian and have practiced small animal medicine and surgery for over 49 years. My hunting activities have involved waterfowl hunting with the use of Labrador and Golden Retrievers, moose, and deer hunting and running foxhounds on fox and coyotes during the winter months. Angling has been limited to Walleye and Pike fishing in Northern Ontario. I have also been involved with several community service clubs and organizations.

I am pleased to serve as a provincial director-at-large for a fourth two-year term.

My picture may look familiar -- I was president of the OFAH from 2011 to 2014, and I have served on the board for 22 years. I have also chaired the OFAH Firearms/Recreational Shooting/Hunter Education/Bowhunting Advisory Committee for 19 years and would like to continue to chair this important OFAH committee. I have also been a firearms and hunter education instructor for 40 years. I am a very avid fisherman and I love going fishing with my grandchildren, something I was finally able to do again this year. One of my greatest joys in hunting is having trained my grandson and then guided him to his first wild turkey. I have represented Canada as the volunteer instructor on the International Hunter Education Association’s Board of Directors for seven years and have served on many provincial hunter education committees. My experience and contacts in the firearms and hunter education communities have served the OFAH well and will continue to do so in the future.