In the seventies I graduated in journalism from Toronto’s Ryerson University and began my journey to the far corners of Canada and the world. I worked at small weeklies in the remote north but soon headed south to hitch-hike through Mexico. Not the best option for a young female, but what did I know?

My next stops were in Japan at Kyodo Newswire, reporting at The Hong Kong Standard and at a rural daily in New Zealand. This was not the glamorous life of a foreign correspondent sent overseas but the kind of low-paying jobs a traveller gets on the spot to fund their ongoing journey. And travel I did: to Siberia, China, Tibet, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Australia, Central America, and Peru, before circling back in 2000 to where I started  my journey … in Mexico City editing The News.

Since then I’ve volunteered with orphanages and animal shelters in India. My novel, Sutra of the Pearl, released in December, 2020, is a  fictionalized version  of those adventures.

My travels far from over,  as soon as Greece emerges from covid lockdown that’s where I’m headed to research my next novel.

Lee Kaiser, November 21, 2020