To get a better sense of who I am, take a look at my photos.

I was born in Toronto and grew up in Nepean — now part of Ottawa. I attended Bell High School, starting in 1962. When I met with my guidance counsellor, I told him I wanted to be a photographer. He told me I wasn't smart enough, and suggested I'd be better off taking woodworking or auto repair instead.

So I left school, moved back to Toronto, and started looking for work. A staffing agency called Manpower sent me and two others out for an interview at 105 Davenport Road. I got the job. I was taken to the first floor and put to work right away — my title was bike messenger. The profile photo you see here is me on the job at Ken Bell Photography. The shirt and tie were standard dress for a bike messenger at the time. In the photo, I'm sitting in the production room, sorting and retouching photographs.

It wasn't until thirty years later that I understood the significance of where I had worked. I was walking down Rideau Street in Ottawa one day, window shopping, when a book caught my eye. Inside it was one of the most famous Canadian photographs of the D-Day landing — taken by Ken Bell. That was the moment I realized I had been working for one of Canada's most celebrated photographers.

The photographs Ken Bell took are the only known surviving colour images of the D-Day landing. Like most Canadian veterans, the soldiers he documented rarely spoke about their wartime experiences — it simply wasn't the custom.