The Chieftain: Personal Memoirs in Poetry & Prose

I was born on November 21, 1935 in the city of Toronto. In 1942, I attended King’s College in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and at the end of the war, I returned to my birth city until the start of the Korean War, when my father rejoined the service. In the 1950s, I also joined the Navy, like my father, and also sailed “deep sea” in the merchant service. In the 1960s, I became a tax assessor and for several years worked as an income tax consultant. At the age of thirty-five, I started teaching at Loyalist College and retired in the late 1990s. My avocation has always included reading and athletics, but at forty-four, I upped the ante and became a long-distance runner. I ran my last race at seventy-six, and in between, I completed sixty-seven full marathons and many others of a lesser distance.

I was subconsciously driven in the closing chapter of my life to examine, if I could, what my time here was all about. So I started writing poems and later stories.

I’m the oldest member of the family, and as the name Graham is Scottish, I go by “the Chieftain.”

At the naval college I attended, I was Chief Cadet Captain or First Captain on two occasions—not matched by anyone since, to my knowledge.