#sparkchamber 081224 — Rick Irving

The waning days of summer always seem to bring to mind days gone by. And in that spirit, #sparkchamber welcomes retired business professor, practicing iconoclast, ex-farmboy, and author, Rick Irving. Rick grew up in the fifties and sixties in rural New Brunswick, Canada, went to one-room country schools, and ultimately completed a Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo. Eventually, he had a thirty-five-year career as a tenured professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, but on the way, he had three marriages, travelled the world, taught on four continents, lived in New York for two years, and spent a year in Provence before it was fashionable. Rick was in Lisbon in April 1974 during the Carnation Revolution; he was once detained by the police in southern France for hitchhiking; and he hiked part of the Inca Trail.

Now retired, Rick recently completed an illustrated memoir about growing up in rural New Brunswick — Backwoods Boy — a lighthearted romp through the maple trees and blueberry bushes of his childhood in Canada during the fifties and sixties.

Emerging from World War II, the rural county of Baltimore, New Brunswick, was isolated by poor roads and a lack of expensive telecommunications. Nevertheless, this seclusion fostered deep community connections and a solid sense of place in the people who raised their families, helped their neighbors, and built their lives without fanfare or recognition.

Thirty-four pencil-and-ink sketches and thirteen photographs accompany whimsical stories that illustrate the joys and challenges of each season and demonstrate the social effects of technology’s progression.

Available in a signed hard- or softcover edition, or an ebook. A perfect summer read.

1.] Where do ideas come from?
A combination of experience, solitude, and boredom

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
Getting my story out there

3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?

I love to work early in the morning. A walk by the lake helps. Sometimes an idea just arrives and I try to get it down either in writing or by drawing while it is still hot. Then the tedious process of refining it begins

4.] How do you know when you are done?

When I would rather cut my throat than look at it again. But sometimes I just know.