I am from a family of cowboys and cowgirls. I was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario – a small city by national comparison, but the largest city in all of Northwestern Ontario with a population that fluctuates around 100,000 people. It is a rather isolated city closer to the Canadian border with Minnesota, USA than to its nearest domestic municipality Winnipeg, Manitoba. I have a great deal of pride in my hometown, and I feel a very close connection with my family; we have all been through a tremendous amount. I was born to a frightened teenage mother of seventeen, and a twenty-year-old father ready to accept the consequences of their mistake. Three years later my brother William was born. I wish I could say the rest is history, and that we lived happily ever after, but this is far from the case. Needless to say we all endured a tumultuous eleven-year separation until they put the final stake in their marriage and divorced when I was seventeen years old because my dad was ready to re-marry. Shortly after, my half-brother Michael was born to my father and his new wife – and the rest is history.