I grew up in Orillia, Ontario, Canada. My mother was a teacher. My father died in WWII before I was born. When I was 12, I got a job at the Orillia Public Library. I was younger than the girls that the library usually hired, but I worked there for four years — starting at 40 cents an hour.

When I was in 12th grade, my mother remarried and we moved to Goderich, Ontario. For grade 13, I moved back to Orillia by myself and boarded with friends. I picked the high school in Orillia because it would permit me to take three math classes and not take biology. I had no intention of taking biology and having to dissect a frog. I attended the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, and majored in English as an undergraduate. I selected it because it was the only university that did not require freshmen to take physical education.

A major theme of my life has been a desire to move to new places. For about 30 years of my life, I would live someplace for two years, then I would find a reason to change my living space, my job, my city, or my country of residence. The timeframe has become longer as I have aged as it is just harder to move than it used to be.

After two years at the University of Waterloo, I got a Green Card for the USA, moved to Boston and attended the Cambridge School of Business (a secretarial school). I picked the school because I thought Boston sounded glamorous. I can see that my reasons for making choices were not the best, but it always worked out all right. I spent a year in Boston and had a part-time job at Harvard University Library. I went back to the University of Waterloo and graduated, then returned to the United States for about 40 years with a couple of breaks to go to New Zealand and England to work. I lived in Boston; Anchorage; Honolulu; Glendale, AZ; Chicago; Santa Fe, Washington, DC; Stamford, CT; Falls Church and Harrisonburg, VA. In Boston, I attended the Rittners School of Floral Design and became a professional florist. Along the way, I managed to get get a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Hawaii and a Master of International Management degree from Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, AZ.

In Auckland, New Zealand, I was a reference librarian in the Public Library. As the only librarian who knew how to use the U.S. Zip Code directory, I helped people address their U.S. bound Christmas cards.

In mid-1986, I returned to Washington, DC, and started a business researching international social security, private pensions, healthcare, labor laws and taxation of employee benefits. I have written reports on the social security systems and labor laws of about fifty countries.

In the mid-1990s, East European countries were reforming their social security systems. I joined a team, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, to advise the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (now the Republic of North Macedonia) on the reform of its social security system.

I married when I was 54 and lived in Falls Church, Virginia. My husband, Robert Dean, passed away from cancer after we were married for six years,

I returned to Canada when my elderly aunt needed assistance. I had left Canada when I was 20; by the time I returned, Canada had changed the look of the money, changed the national anthem, and had converted to the metric system. Canada felt like a foreign country to me.

In 2013, my long-time friend, Tom McClure, invited me to Ajijic. I had never heard of the place and never had a desire to visit Mexico, but I came to visit for one month. The next two winters, I came to Ajijic again and each time, upon arriving Lakeside, I realized I immediately felt happier than when I was in Canada. After three winters, I received my Permanent Residency, became a full-time resident, and somehow lost my yearning to move again.