- Read her first book in a tree.
- Wrote her first poem when she was seven.
- Was in a commercial for peanut butter when she was six.
- Sang in a school choir that weekly broadcast over radio when she was eight.
- Was a brownie and a girl guide. Be prepared is still one of her favourite mottos.
- Once held, briefly, (a day) the provincial record for the hundred yard dash and the long jump in under fourteen girls.
- Started a petition so girls could wear pants to school when she was in Grade nine. She and her pals got called into the principal's office. Pantsuits were allowed.
- Played on the NB field hockey Team that won the Bronze in Summer Games in 1973.
- Scored the winning basket for FHS to win the New Brunswick Girl's AAA provincial tournament in 1973. Oh yes!
- Started out in nurses training with dreams of becoming pediatric nurse and maybe doctor.
- Had one line in a movie based on a novel by David Adams Richards ("I've always been nothing to you.")
- Was once member of a serious minded theatre troupe called Enterprise Theatre and had a role in grim play on unemployment that toured Atlantic Canada .She traveled in the back of a van on a park bench with three men.
- Was on Romper Room and said poems to DoBee Bee.
- Jumped out of a tree on the Fred Penner Show and recited There Were Monkeys in my Kitchen and then sang with Fred!!!!
- Wrote satirical verse for Telegraph Journal Graham Pilsworth's cartoons based on a character she created called Lucy Lament, a parody of Eliot's Prufrock.
- Played the character Serendippity on the Blue Rainbow. Jumped out of tree stump and played with words.
- Once slept next door to Jean Chrétien at the Motier Hotel in St. Mary's, Newfoundland, before he was Prime Minister of Canada. Then , being "politely rude", she wrote that as first line of in a letter when he was PM to petition against HST on books in Atlantic Canada.
- Read Sleeping Dragons All Around at the Library of Congress.
- Climbed an iceberg in the Arctic ocean. The bay was frozen.
- Once was paid $2.50 for an author reading. Not $250!
- Ran from a polar bear with Margaret Atwood.
- Was rejected for ten years before she was published.
- Is a doctor of letters two times.
- Is afraid of snakes and mice.
- Stood on a Himalayan Mountain by a sign that said "You are at the highest point."
- Climbed to Temple of T'ksing with her writing students in Bhutan. See photo gallery.
- Got to the town of Ashton where John Hindley in the Gravesavers said he was from.
- Is left-handed.
- Was 30 when she got her B.A, and took seven years to do her masters.
- Would like to write a children's opera before she dies.
- Wants to die with a pen in her hand. When she is VERY old.
- Thinks everyone is the author of their own life story.