Johanna Bertin
Johanna’s love of creating stories dates back to her early childhood. As a five year old, she made up stories and told them to her brother, her Sealyham Terrier and even the snails and slugs that lived in the air raid shelter in the garden of their London, England home.
There was always an element of magic in her stories. Brought up on the classics of Victorian England like The Water Babies and The Arabian Nights, she fell asleep each night, imagining herself on a magic carpet or swimming effortlessly through the water in some enchanted land.
Johanna credits the reading of The Secret Garden for her choice of social work as a profession. Captivated by the magic transformation of the garden and the boy through love, acceptance and nurturing, she seeks to re-create that magic through her work. Her goal is to incorporate writing into that mix – to use her writing to show children and adults that magic can happen in our lives and the lives of others when we treat each other with respect and caring. She believes absolutely in the power of dreams and the importance for each of us to have a dream and to follow it to its realization.
Johanna immigrated to Canada in 1957, and although disappointed that Davy Crockett was not there to greet her, became a Canadian citizen at the earliest opportunity. She has been in love with Canada from the first moment.
She went to a number of different schools in Toronto (during which she was mostly unchallenged and bored) and then attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto. After her B.A., she travelled to Europe and worked for a year before returning to complete her Master of Social Work degree. Her love of education continues and each year she tries to take a course in something, whether it is writing, rug hooking, or public speaking. She works full-time as a medical social worker in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Johanna’s writing history has run the gamut from government reports (Task Force on the Educational Needs of Native Peoples of Ontario) to newspaper and magazine features, essays, and special interest newsletters. She has written three non-fiction books for the Amazing Stories Series of Altitude Publishing. The first, Strange Events: Incredible Canadian Monsters, Curses, Ghosts and Other Tales (2004) went into a second printing ten days after being released. A year later she wrote Strange Events and More: Canadian Giants, Witches, Wizards and Other Tales (2005) and then Sable Island: Tales of Tragedy and Survival from the Graveyard of the Atlantic (2006). She is presently writing a book on strange events of the Atlantic Coast for Altitude Publishing.
Johanna travels at every opportunity. She has camel trekked in Morocco, hiked in China, pony-trekked in Iceland, and ridden in a horse race in Inner Mongolia. She rides a motorbike to work – the closest thing she could find to the magic carpet of her childhood dreams. Lucky enough to live on a farm in Smithfield, New Brunswick with her husband Bruce Pendrel, she has two children – Geoff and Catharine – many animals, and hundreds of books.
