Expertise Register

Name of Member, email address

Knowledgeable about:

Adina, Shelley moonshellbooks@outlook.com

• Copy editor with 25 years experience editing documents for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Hachette, and Subterranean Press, as well as copy editing and proofreading novels for indie authors. I hold a certificate from Berkeley for the Professional Sequence in Editing.
• Indie publisher since 2011, with ability to speak and give workshops on book creation and publication, marketing, and running a small business.
• Chicken keeping and rescue since 2000. Can help with behavioral and social accuracy in flocks, health issues and cures, and the charm and companionship of chickens.

Dikken, Mirjam mirjam.dikken@gmail.com

• speak Dutch fluently (lived in the Netherlands for about 40 years)
• lived for 3.5 years in New Delhi, India (2005-2009); outsider perspective mostly (for insider perspective people really would need a local)
• was a chemical engineer, working in chemical plants, partly in shifts
• was an HR manager/director for 20 years internationally, mostly in European and Asian/Australian settings
• knotting willows (rows of knotted willows are an important aspect of the Dutch lowland landscape) including loading the branches on a truck to be fed to the elephants and zebras of the Rotterdam zoo.

Greenwood, Therese me@therese.ca

• My expertise is actually in crisis/emergency communications and government.
• I was the Chief Public Information Officer for two municipalities.
• I got called if a train derailed or a plane crashed, or someone drowned in the sewer or died on public property. It’s almost always a weather-related accident or negligence.
• I am familiar with process and protocols around public disaster and crisis events, and relevant government Acts for things like the other question in the stream about policing costs (outlined in the provincial municipal act and provincial police act).
• Also bylaw enforcement, zoning restrictions, etc.
• I was a journalist too, but that business has changed a lot.

Kent, Winona winonakent@gmail.com

• I’ve sailed across the ocean on ocean liners. This was in the late 1950s and 1960s before jet travel overtook ships and the ocean liners went out of business. I was a child and a young teenager on these voyages but I have excellent memories of them (and of being very very seasick) so if anyone wants info on what it’s like to cross the Atlantic by ship in summer and winter, I’m good for the info. One of the ships was the Queen Mary (the one that’s permanently drydocked in Long Beach, California). I was only 7 at the time, but I do remember it, and our cabin.
• I worked as a temporary secretary in England in 1973 and 1974. Manual typewriters, electric typewriters, dicta-typing, no shorthand (unfortunately). I’ve also worked as a temp sec through the years in Canada in between more permanent jobs.
• I was a travel agent between 1976 and 1981. So if anyone has any need for any travel-related information from way back then, I might be able to help (airline tickets, hotel bookings, airline reservation systems – they were computerized but it was the very dawn of using computer terminals to make reservations and issue tickets.).
• My sister worked for Princess Cruises for about 15 years in the 1990s and early 2000’s. She was a captain’s secretary, which meant her office was behind the bridge on the ship and she had everything to do with the running of the ship and she reported to the captain. They’ve since phased out that position but it did allow me to travel with her on quite a few cruises (to Alaska and the Caribbean). I stayed in her cabin and I saw the “downstairs” part of cruise ships – I hung out with crew who were part of the Pursers Office, attended parties on the crew deck, saw how that side of the ship worked. My info is a bit dated now unfortunately.
• I know how to do stained glass work – where you cut the glass with a glass cutter according to a pattern, then wrap the edges in copper tape and solder everything together and then apply a patina to turn the solder a dark black colour. Useful for creating stained glass windows, lamp shades, etc. 🙂
• I’m pretty good at family tree research. I have a membership at Ancestry and I’ve done the DNA test and for the past couple of years I’ve been trying to track down the origins of my great-grandfather, who is a total mystery. My experience with these things is limited to using Ancestry as my database and my research base, but I can be useful if anyone has questions about the process, what information is available to use, how to find it, etc.
• I’m a Type 2 diabetic. I used to be insulin-dependant but I lost a lot of weight so I don’t need insulin anymore. I’m still reliant on other diabetes meds though.
• I had a detached retina in 2004. In case anyone wants to give a character a detached retina (it’s invisible so it doesn’t result in any physical deformities or anything like that – it just impacts vision and is an interesting condition to have).

Robson, Merrilee mrobson@telus.net

• sitting on boards of national writing and publishing organizations such as Crime Writers of Canada to local neighbourhood association
• sat on the PNE board back in the early 1990s
• current volunteer board involvement: Sinc Canada West, Friends of the Vancouver City Archives, and the Vancouver Police Board, which provides civilian oversight to the Vancouver Police
• have incorporated new boards: the housing co-op and the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC.
• been on the staff of non-profit organizations with boards

Knowledge of:

• Co-operative and non-profit housing
• Government relations and lobbying
• Election campaigns
• University student newspapers

Experience as:

• a cashier in a small department store
• a child care counsellor
• an activity worker for psychiatric outpatients
• a proofreader and editor
• and ran a summer youth hostel for women