Bio | Niackery

My parents imparted their love of travel to me early on. When I was four, verging on five, they announced to my sister and I that once our newborn baby brother was five, we would take a trip to Florida and go to Disney World. They worked hard to make this dream come true, and while us kids forgot about the pending voyage for years, they never did, pinching pennies and perpetually planning.

Since that first family vacation abroad, I’ve found it difficult to stay in one place, constantly yearning to see more of the world, even moving from city to city and apartment to apartment within each new place, sometimes to achieve that goal, but usually out of sheer restlessness. My nomadic tendencies have shaped my life philosophy irrevocably. I believe the world is meant to be experienced in all its beauty and hardships, otherwise it is only half-known and life is only half-lived.

My parents also passed on their love of nature to me throughout the years spent growing up in the Lake Nipissing – Georgian Bay area, particularly French River and Killarney. Blessed with access to the vast North Eastern Ontarian outdoors, we spent our summers on the family houseboat, cruising around, fishing, camping, swimming, and exhausting ourselves with the abundance of fresh air. The winters were equally occupied with ice fishing, skating, tobogganing, and snowmobiling.

Now, the Earth and her health have become one of my primary passions. I roam her forests and her fields, her mountains and her marshes, having supplanted the motorized family pastimes of my youth with hiking and snowshoeing. Travel and trekking have become the means by which I manifest my connection to She who has given me so much.

My own passion for art, history, and culture has also always been a great motivator. My taste for art was expanded in Paris when I visited the Musée d’Orsay. Since then, my thirst for beauty has been unquenchable. I moved from Ottawa to Toronto because I would have greater access to the arts and spent that time attending as many performances (whether literary, theatrical, or musical) and exhibitions (both at museums and galleries) as my wallet would allow. And, I have always made sure to seek various artistic and cultural experiences on my journeys, for travel introduced me to unknown yet captivating art forms (literature and theatre were already entrenched into my being), and I suspect, will continue to expose me to inspiring works.

So, after devoting my early twenties to academics, I spent nearly two years of my mid-twenties writing in Toronto’s finance industry. I escaped to backpack in South America a bit, then spent a year in South Korea as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, only to return in time to waitress at a sports bar in Vancouver during the Olympics. Following a short break in Australia, I am now based in French River, Ontario.

My travels have brought me to Florida, New York City, Paris, Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Canada’s Maritime provinces and its West Coast, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, South Korea, and Australia. I have lived in Sudbury, West Nipissing, French River, Ottawa, Toronto, Busan, and Vancouver.

Not long after returning to French River, I became Associate Editor of PublicValues.ca, which I did for two years. In the spring of 2011, I published my first e-book, Memories of a Carnivore. I later began submitting articles to Simplified Living Magazine on a freelance basis. New and exciting for me in 2012 was launching my new blog, Green Niackery! In 2013, I developed the Niackery brand:

• JourNiackery: Travel &and Trekking Jots &and Shots
• Green Niackery: On the Path to an Earth-Friendly Lifestyle
• MiscellaNiackery: Artsy, Newsy, Techy Medley

Clearly, my lifelong interests haven’t changed much!

In the past few years, I’ve been mentioning my partner more and more in my articles. Marc’s contributed a lot of photos for my articles, for which I’ve been very grateful. One of the things I love most about Marc is his unique perspective, which is often reflected in his images.

I’m very excited to see where our future together will take us! We make a great team out in the backcountry and on the road, but we’ve yet to travel abroad together. That’s a goal we’re working on (smiley face).

And now that I’m a Certified Travel Counsellor, I can help others organize their own travels, which to me is almost as good as being there myself! Almost.