Nancy Silcox

The Exceptional Vera Good Nancy Silcox

This lively biography compellingly traces the exceptional life of Dr. Vera Good. Born in 1915 into an Old Order Mennonite family in Waterloo County, and now a centenarian, Vera Good made her mark as an educator, concluding her working career as an executive producer of children's programming for TV Ontario (1965-1981). She laid the conceptual design and was the first executive producer for the long-running children's series ""Polka Dot Door,"" for which she received a Gemini award in 2000. Prior to her work with television she was highly regarded as an innovative educator and was one of the first female principals in the Toronto school system and the first female Inspector of Schools in Ontario. In her early 30s she served in India as a volunteer with Mennonite Central Committee (1946-1949), during the turbulent years when India gained independence. Her postsecondary education took her to diverse locations and institutions, including the Stratford Normal School, Goshen College (Indiana), Northwestern University (Chicago), and Columbia University (New York City) for her Doctor of Education. Nancy Silcox is an award-winning writer, has twenty years' experience as a high school teacher, and concluded her career as a counsellor in the Special Needs Department at Wilfrid Laurier University. She holds a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Waterloo, and wrote an education column for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record for eight years. After her retirement in 2005, Silcox moved into full-time freelance writing as a columnist for Waterloo Region Record and a magazine features writer for Grand Magazine, Arabella Design Magazine, Canada's History, and Canadian Antiques and Vintage Magazine. Since then she has written a dozen books, with an area of specialty in personal biography, historical biography, and art. She has received two Queen's Jubilee medals and a Canada 150 medal for excellence in writing.