About Andy
Andy Juniper was born and raised in Woodstock, Ontario, third child of Dennis and Doreen Juniper, brother to Denny and Guy. He attended Huron Park Secondary School where he met Maureen Kelly, his future wife: tender teens locking eyes across a crowded Grade 10 science class. You could say, and you wouldn’t be wrong: they had chemistry together.
My desire and drive to become a writer had to come from somewhere. My mother believed that writing was in my bones, my blood, my DNA. After all, her father, James Livingston Sutherland, was a writer who penned a popular sports column for The Woodstock-Sentinel Review under the moniker of Bleacher Bill.
Bred in the bones, blood, DNA? All I know is that while most everyone around me would exit high school still uncertain of what they wanted to do with their lives, I entered knowing that I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, at that time, a poet. Which entailed long nights anchored on a couch in our living room, drinking coffee to the point of palpitations and nausea, wallowing in melancholic music on the stereo while I collected my thoughts and channelled my Inner Leonard Cohen. Bleeding my tender heart out onto the page. In retrospect, all a smidge pretentious. I mean, I might as well have walked around wearing a beret while liberally employing evocative poet-y words. Gossamer. Lachrymose. Iridescence. Serendipitous. Erstwhile.
Writing, writing, writing. Sure, at times I was tugged in different directions. But did I ever really think I had a shot at being a musician – as was my plan for a while there -- when I did not possess a single musical bone in my body? Couldn’t beat out a basic rhythm on the bongos, couldn’t land a guitar chord, and really could not sing. And yet, cheekily enough, despite having vocal stylings of an animal snared in a trap, I formed bands. The Dead C, The Wing Nuts, The Abrasive Tools. With myself as the frontman! I think that I had better odds at being a theoretical physicist (the next Einstein), or a supermodel (the Twiggy of my time), than I did of becoming a rock star. But when you’re young, you dream. And when you’re young, you’re delusional.
In high school, Andy chased things (see: Maureen Kelly, see: dreams) and make no mistake, the boy could run like the wind. Or, at least, like a gust, or gentle breeze. Years and years after his athletic days were long since behind him, he had a chance meeting on the outdoor patio of The Lowville Bistro with a fellow former sprinter. “Hey,” he whispered to his wife, “that guy over there with his back to us is Hugh Spooner.” Hugh Who? “Spooner -- former Canadian Olympian.” Who Andy competed against at the All-Ontario championships all those misty years ago. Reunited, the sprinters shared a moment. “I ran with you,” Andy said, before correcting himself. “Actually, I didn’t run with you so much as I ran behind you.” Andy would recognize the back of Hugh Spooner anywhere. Chasing, always chasing things.
Unsurprisingly, my poetry phase fizzled. Possibly I’d connected the dots between poetry and poverty. Possibly I’d just run out of rhymes. Possibly I was being guided (from above) in a whole different creative direction; Bleacher Bill leading this horse to water and making him drink.
I was a sports nut from birth. Played, watched, and followed. Obsessively. My father and I rose each morning at the crack of dawn, poured coffee, and tussled over who would get first dibs at the sports section of The London Free Press. Around that time, I found myself studying, and near-libelously pilfering, the writing styles of assorted newspaper gods: Ring Lardner, an early influence on F.Scott Fitzgerald; Russell Baker of The New York Times; Allen Abel, who’d just arrived on the scene at The Globe & Mail and was instantly wowing readers. I began dreaming of one day working at The Globe, sharing space and air with the likes of Abel. To that end, I started freelancing for The Sentinel-Review. A few months in, I was called into the office of the publisher of the S-R who offered me a job as a sports reporter at The Chronicle Journal-Times News (another link in the Thomson newspaper chain) in Thunder Bay.
Andy, nineteen-years-old, spreading his wings, flying the coop, ill-equipped for life on his own. A momma’s boy, suddenly one-thousand miles from home -- and momma -- unable to fend for himself. Sure, he knew how to boil a potato, and… well, that’s about it. Hopelessly homesick, he tossed himself into his work, learning invaluable lesson after invaluable lesson on how to be a jack-of-all-trades; that is, a small-town sports reporter.
Crusty Sports Editor to Anxious Andy: “Remember when I asked if you had any experience with sports photography and you said you did?” Sure, he remembered. “Well, your pics from the baseball game last night didn’t turn out. Next time experiment with taking the lens cap off…” Lens cap? Who knew? “And at night,” the editor added, “maybe use a flash…” Crusty Sports Editor: “Oh, and I read the column you wrote on spec. Think you’re up for writing one a week?” Anxious Andy (doing cartwheels in his mind): Sure.
I spent less than a year in Thunder Bay. Still, I met a lot of fine people and learned a lot of essentials: about journalism, about writing, and about life. Even learned how to pan-fry a pork chop to accompany my lonely boiled potato. To boot, I formed a bond with a guy named Don Punch, Lakehead University basketball coach, who became a staunch advocate of my writing. Out of the blue, before departing T-Bay, I was contacted by Jim Vipond, fabled Globe & Mail Sports Editor. He said he’d heard of me via ‘The Punch’, who unbeknownst to me, had mailed him clippings of my work. Vipond said he was calling to let me know that I was lacking and that he couldn’t hire me… Ugh. “But,” he continued, “if you can get some city-side reporting experience under your belt, we might be able to find a place for you here…” I packed my bags, left the Lakehead, and returned to the roost. Back to Woodstock, and a job at the Sentinel-Review as a city-side reporter. Jim Vipond in my thoughts, The Globe ever in my crosshairs.
Fourteen months as a city-side reporter, subbing in one day a week as the paper’s Sports Editor and continuing to write a weekly sports column. On the personal front, I got engaged to The Tenth Grade Chemistry Girl. Having graduated from Western University, Maureen was back in Woodstock working a summer job and prepping to move to Toronto that fall to attend Humber College. We’d done the long-distance thing and found it to be about as appealing as seasonal flu and cold toilet seats. We weren’t looking forward to doing it again. Needing to get myself to Toronto, I contacted the Globe, hoping to reconnect with Jim Vipond, only to learn that my lone contact at the newspaper-of-my-dreams had retired. Gut. Punch. Alas (now there’s a poet-y word), a few weeks after Maureen headed off to The Big Smoke, the moon and the stars aligned. I was having dinner with my parents and, in one of those life-moments forever frozen in time, the phone rang: Cec Jennings, newly minted Sports Editor of The Globe & Mail, saying he’d found my resume in a folder Jim Vipond had left behind and was wondering if I ever thought of working at The Globe. Thought about it, dreamed about it. Pretty much every day for the previous five years…
Andy and Maureen married. Honeymooned in San Francisco, drove down the storied California coast and then (reluctantly) returned to reality. Maureen finishing school and beginning a career in public relations – first steps on a career path that would one day lead her to owning her own PR company. Andy living the dream, working at the Globe. Only… Andy’s dreams were shapeshifting. Newspaper life and married life did not easily or happily coalesce. Andy (gasp) actually wanted to spend time with his wife, which was difficult to do while working in a sports department, wherein everything happens at nights and on weekends. Further, unsurprisingly, given his voracious reading habits and a lifelong love of fiction, he was dabbling in that genre. Stealing moments of time in a busy life to construct stories and search for his voice. Daydreaming of writing a novel, of becoming a novelist.
I left the life I thought I wanted and moved to Harlequin – yes, that Harlequin. A nine-to-five job editing the romance publisher’s prodigious Action-Adventure imprint, Gold Eagle Books: The Executioner, Phoenix Force, et al. Books that sold mind-bogglingly well – in 1987 alone, Gold Eagle shipped 500-million copies of its thrillers out to its insatiable audience. Astronomical sales aside, the books were revered amongst paramilitary peeps and sociopaths alike, readers who were forever writing Gold Eagle editors with misspelled encouragement and sage advice. Such as, “More garroting!” Seriously. “More garroting!” After more garroting than I could take, I split with Gold Eagle, determined to hunker down and write a novel.
Andy and Maureen spent five years in Toronto. With the birth of their first bambino, Matthew James – Scott Andrew and Haley Christian to follow – they began to crave space. A bigger abode, a backyard. Things they could certainly dream about but not afford in Toronto. They settled in Oakville for sixteen wonderful years. During that period, Andy freelanced, wrote a weekly lifestyle column for Metroland Newspapers, and published two novels, Sweet Grass and The Sunforth Chronicles, along with two column compilations, When You Get Done Bleeding Will You Get Me A Snack? and Strangled Eggs.
We loved Oakville. Naively enough, I thought we might stay there forever. But… one day Maureen returned home from a drive in the country and announced that she’d found a beautiful home on twenty-three acres in the village of Moffat. Soon thereafter she was introducing me to our new realtor. And so began a whole new adventure. Over twenty-one years (and counting) of living and loving country life. Tending to the acreage. Watching our kids grow up and fly the coop. Sharing space and time with a sweet succession of dogs – Franny, Zoey, Phoebe, and cousins Ellie and Chuck; horses – Bambi, Apollo, Nicky and Amigo; and even some chickens.
And the two constants? The Grade Ten Chemistry Girl and writing, writing, writing. Because writing is in his bones, blood, DNA. Fifteen-hundred columns for Metroland. A hundred weekly sports humor columns for Sportsnet.ca. Reams of copy for The Sport Jesters, a website he created and hosted.
Andy is currently working on three projects: Wild Life, a humorous homage/memoir to life in Moffat; The Party Line And Everything After, a novel set in the world of professional hockey that is set for publication in 2026; and Angels in the Architecture, due out this summer via Mosaic Press.
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