Us
Marcy is the mother of Eli and a keen appreciator of fermentation, especially in the form of beer. She was born in Washington State but grew up in Celista, a very small town in the interior of British Columbia north of Salmon Arm. Marcy decided that her career would be best built on an English degree, which she obtained from Simon Fraser University many, many years ago.
With that impressive credential under her arm, she spent years working in the film and tech industries before taking time off to shepherd Eli through his baby and toddler years, all the while building an impressive side-hustle selling breads and muffins farmers’ markets.
Marcy is the mother of Eli and a keen appreciator of fermentation, especially in the form of beer. She was born in Washington State but grew up in Celista, a very small town in the interior of British Columbia north of Salmon Arm. Marcy decided that her career would be best built on an English degree, which she obtained from Simon Fraser University many, many years ago.
With that impressive credential under her arm, she spent years working in the film and tech industries before taking time off to shepherd Eli through his baby and toddler years, all the while building an impressive side-hustle selling breads and muffins farmers’ markets.
Marcy then took a part-time job with the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors which, applying a combination of intellect, charisma and raw talent, she parlayed into a position leading the Association’s member services team. She is currently the Association’s Director of Public Relations and Advocacy and is well-respected by her colleagues and peers throughout British Columbia’s mental health services community.
John-Paul is the father of Morgan and also an appreciator of fermentation, especially in the form of bread. He was born and grew up in Toronto, where he flunked out of high school and endured the horrors of night school while collecting a diploma in fine arts from the Ontario College of Art.
He left Toronto immediately thereafter for the more bucolic charms of Guelph, Ontario, where he obtained degrees in philosophy — just as useful as a degree in English, really — before leaving for law school at the University of British Columbia
He remained in British Columbia’s lower mainland, where the extremely congenial weather allowed him to ride his motorcycle year-‘round, practicing law, until leaving to run the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family at the University of Calgary. Following the closure of the Institute, he remained in Calgary and established a practice mediating and arbitrating family law disputes.
Marcy and John-Paul bumped into each other in 2012 or 2013 when Marcy noticed John-Paul’s name in connection with certain practice standards being revised for the Association. The memory of that chance encounter was nearly lost in the sands of time until John-Paul was asked to do more work on the Association’s family law practice standard in 2020, an endeavour which had languished because of changes in the law until Marcy took the project over and assumed the whip in 2021. That project sparked discussions about providing training in the legal issues associated with family breakdown for the Association’s members, during which Marcy and John-Paul met, in person, for the very first time. The Association ultimately approved the training, which resulted in a very well-received series of two-day presentations by John-Paul and Alyson Jones, a renowned clinical counsellor based in the lower mainland, provided in British Columbia and Yukon, over the course of 2022.
Needless to say, Marcy and John-Paul wound up spending a fair amount of time together over the course of 2022, enduring long training days and commiserating with each other thereafter, and a collegial relationship based on mutual respect and Marcy’s ruthless quest for global dominance gradually blossomed into a less platonic relationship based on mutual respect and Marcy’s astonishing beauty, not to mention their shared weirdness and mutual enjoyment of good music, good food and good beer. For reasons best known to herself and largely incomprehensible to others, Marcy happily accepted John-Paul’s proposal to marry in 2023.
For the immediate future, Marcy and John-Paul expect to lead a bijurisdictional life, with Marcy based in her home in Victoria with Eli, and John-Paul based in the frigid wastes of Calgary with Morgan. However, they expect to find themselves living in the same home at some point in the next few years. Where that home will be located is uncertain; Victoria has its charms, but so do goat farms in the northern parts of Vancouver Island or the interior of British Columbia where Marcy can brew obscure beers and John-Paul can make cheese and create marvelous things with his sourdough starter.
The domain singledigits.ca was inspired by Eli, and has nothing to do with either intelligence quotients or phalanges. While expounding upon his mother’s many oddnesses and eccentricities, Eli chanced to remark that the likelihood of her finding a partner who was just as odd and just as eccentric was “in the single digits.” Marcy and John-Paul agree and take great joy in their shared idiosyncrasies.
John-Paul is very glad to have Morgan, his parents David and Joan, his sister Jillian, and her partner Neil, present, bearing in mind that this webpage was created well in advance of the wedding date and their attendance is not actually certain at the time of writing.
Marcy is likewise glad to have Eli and her very closest friends with her. Marcy’s parents are sadly deceased, sparing them from the necessity of witnessing this spectacle and relieving Marcy of any need to be on her best behaviour.