(an origin story)
When I was in grade one, my family moved from the home we had rented for the previous five years to a tent on a piece of land my parents bought and on which my dad was building a house. The tent was large and had been used by crew on movie sets in hard to reach locations selected by my uncle. It had two rooms: the back room, separated by a canvas, zippered door, became the bedroom of my brother and me, with bunk beds that didn’t sit flush against the domed structure; the larger front room was the living room and my parents’ bedroom with a queen sized bed, folding desk, couch, black and white television and a kerosene heater for the cold winters we still had; in the beginning we had a telephone with a partyline. My dad built a kitchen with a gas stove, sink, fridge and dining table and he constructed a deck extending from the front of the tent that also had a front door. We had a musty shower house that doubled as dry-goods storage and pantry and an outhouse without a door; at night we only ventured out to the john for number twos and peed in a metal bucket next to the bunk beds. On wet nights, the tent would fill with the deafening smacking of rain on vinyl, rendering conversation futile; on windy nights, my parents, not trusting the structural integrity of the tent against the massive cedars among which it was pitched, would put my little brother and me and a pile of sleeping bags in the back of my dad’s work van and we would sleep in the safety of the vehicle in the cul-de-sac at the beach, lulled to sleep by crashing waves and only once being woken by police officers checking on our well-being. In the summertime we hung laundry and ate all of our meals on the deck underneath the giant maple tree and its resident squirrel. The squirrel, aptly named “Squirrely,” would drop helicopters in our dishes and chatter at us as we ate and became our family mascot. Certainly Squirrely was attributed to any number of different tree rodents that harassed us over our three-year stint in the tent but neither myself or my equally witty father ever thought to include our surname in the name game: Squirrel Searle, Squirrely Searle, Squirrely Searley, Searle Squirrel. I’m surprised and a little embarrassed at this oversight, but I guess I was only seven.
The point of this story is that I had a somewhat unorthodox childhood that encouraged creativity and individuality. From a young age, I was taught to approach difficult situations with imagination and ingenuity. I was raised in the woods on the Sunshine Coast of BC, on a diet of nature, music and literature. In our house (tent) David Byrne was (is) idolized and the CBC was almost always on in the background. I could read a music staff before I could read a paragraph, taking piano lessons from the age of four, the violin at ten and when I was 12, I was lugging around a dented, school-owned, Baritone in a laundry bag. I perpetually had my nose in a book and was encouraged by teachers to write from as young as I can remember –I have always carried that encouragement with me.
Creativity and outside-the-box thinking have been ingrained in my DNA and I thrive most when challenged to devise new ways of communicating ideas for different, sometimes difficult, audiences. I hold a BA in Professional Communications from Royal Roads University and an Associate Degree in Creative Writing from CapU, the combination of which has taught me to apply my skills practically but also innovatively, not unlike temporarily moving your family into a tent when options and resources are limited.
I currently reside nestled between the mountains and the ocean in Vancouver, BC with my American boyfriend, Dave, and my two-year-old cat Audre. In my spare time I try and explore the outdoors as much as possible, walking, biking, hiking, camping or snowboarding and if you can’t track me down, check the thrift store, it’s my second home.
My last name rhymes with Squirrel.