Barry Grills

 Former journalist, broadcaster, municipal councillor and federal  election candidate, Barry Grills was born in Belleville, Ontario in  1948. He has been publishing short fiction in Canada since 1973. Short  stories appeared in various literary magazines such as Quarry, Grain,  and the University of Windsor Review, as well as anthologies, including  Best Canadian Stories. He is also the author of three cultural  biographies from Quarry Press on the lives of Anne Murray, Alanis  Morissette and Celine Dion. An updated biography of Celine Dion with Jim  Brown was the source of a CBC Television movie which aired in 2008.  Every Wolf's Howl: A Memoir, about his adventures, friendship, and  spiritual transformation with a wolf-German shepherd cross companion,  will be published by Freehand Books in autumn 2012.
 

A cultural and political activist, he is a past chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, having also served on its executive and
National Council as treasurer, second vice-chair and first  vice-chair. He also chaired the Union’s Cultural Agenda Lobby Committee  for six years. He has been the Union’s representative to the Canadian  Conference of the Arts, the International Network for Cultural Diversity  and the Coalition for Cultural Diversity where he served on the  executive and as a member of its executive committee on a new  international instrument for cultural diversity negotiated at UNESCO,  which came into being a few years ago. In May, 2006, he was elected once  again to the National Council of The Writers’ Union as an advocate. He  stepped down at the end of May, 2008 to devote more time to teaching and  writing. He also stepped down as chair of the Book and Periodical  Council, a position to which he was first elected in May, 2004. He has  been a municipal councillor and, in 1988, ran for the NDP in  Leeds-Grenville, to fight the infamous Free Trade Agreement with the  United States.  In a regional context, he is a founding director of the Arts  Council of Muskoka and a former chair of the Ontario Tourism Marketing  Partnership initiative, Arts in the Wild. He was a director of the North  Bay Area Arts Council and, until recently, served as vice-chair of  North Bay’s Coordinating Body on Arts, Culture and Heritage.   He continues to focus privately on globalization issues and their  impact on cultural sovereignty, and devotes most of his volunteer time  to freedom of expression issues, as well as supporting environmental  initiatives.  Primarily a writer of book-length fiction, he also writes and  publishes magazine articles on a freelance basis. A self-professed  existentialist, his creative works tend to address the role of  conventional mythology in human society.
 

He is married to writer and community college professor, Jennifer Rouse Barbeau. They live in North Bay, Ontario.

"The  great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate,  contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and  unrealistic."     John F. Kennedy  
  
 
"Duties derive all, or at least a good part, of their sanctity from want of courage to fight for one's private life."     Hermann Hesse

Roadkill by Barry Grills (novel) launched November 2017