About

Ann Tiplady is a Canadian-American-Canadian writer, biologist, former farmer, and almost economist. She writes memoir, personal essay, non-fiction stories, and book reviews. When not at her desk, she is in her garden.

She grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and received a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of British Columbia. She emigrated to the US for graduate school, receiving a Master of Science in Wildlife Management from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her focus was animal ecology, particularly behavioral ecology.

Ann lived in Alaska for eight years, four in Fairbanks and four in Juneau, where she worked as an Ecologist for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Twelve years in Snohomish, Washington, where she began farming on a small scale were next, followed by twelve years in Wallingford, Vermont, where she put her whole heart and soul into establishing a real farm producing 100% grassfed meats using an ecological approach to animals and land.

As that farm was failing, she returned to the college classroom, taking all the economics classes her schedule allowed. She is in Canada now, living in Victoria, B.C.

Academic History

Being animal crazy, I aspired to be a veterinarian from an early age. I enrolled in Animal Science, in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the University of British Columbia because it seemed the most direct route to vet school.

But, I found I was far more interested in the ecology of the animals, particularly behavioral ecology. When I discovered the people studying wildlife, a group spread across the faculties of agriculture, forestry, and zoology, I had found my niche. Goodbye vet school, hello field work.

I loved university, especially graduate school. For my master’s degree I went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks to study muskoxen, marrying the twin disciplines of domestic animal and wild animal biology, and combining field work in the wild with captive animal work. I was in heaven. My master’s thesis was entitled “The effects of milk intake, growth, and suckling efficiency on suckling behavior of muskox (Ovibos moschastus) calves.”

Steeping for years in ungulate mother-young bonding and nursing behavior I developed a burning desire to farm, particularly sheep, to put my ecological understanding to work. I was intensely interested in how people and animals, especially grazing animals, work together to make a living in the landscape. Living in Snohomish, Washington, I tested my farming ideas with a small flock of sheep, while also starting a family. Late in 2003, we moved our young family to Vermont, where I could finally pursue my dream: a real farm serving the community by producing 100% grassfed lamb and beef.

The financial crisis of 2008 changed everything, raising real doubts about the farm, and everything. I began asking questions about money and policy and people and society, and began taking undergraduate courses at Castleton State College where my by now nearly grown children were attending. To double-check my foundations I took my old favorite, behavioral ecology, and from there anthropology and economics. What fascinating subjects! I wished I had taken them long before. For several years I took a steady stream of economics classes. This period coincided with my personal tragedy: shutting down our farm operation. Taking classes got me out, keeping me moving and learning. By simply taking course after course I was headed for a bachelor’s degree in economics, cut short when we moved to Victoria.

I felt right at home in Behavioral Economics, it was my old favorite, behavioral ecology, but applied to people. My interest in economics, how policies create the economy and drive land use, and how money works, continues, especially as it affects democracy.

What I care about

Justice. Democracy. Civilization. Those words, written in black marker on a pink 4” x 6” index card, have been pinned over my desk since the 2008 financial cataclysm shook the world, prompting me to ask new questions about life, the universe, and everything. Without Democracy, and a Just Society, my lifelong focus on nature and conservation was meaningless.

I particularly admire inquisitive truth tellers, those who investigate what they don’t like, or don’t understand, reasoning through to underlying causes. Being a truth teller, questioning norms and challenging traditional views, is difficult work that wins few friends. But we need truth tellers. They make us think. They prod civilization forward.

What does it take to move mountains? To move the policy makers and decision makers? It takes many voices, people speaking up, building the consensus that pushes governments, big and small, to do the right thing. I am adding my voice to that conversation.

I care about wise use of the landscapes and animals that support us. I care about wise policy that creates healthy communities. I care about acceptance and empathy. I particularly appreciate the importance of publicly-funded schools, including universities, for making education and training available to everyone who has an appetite for it. Good teachers lift students up, helping them climb free of circumstances that could hold them back. A good and just society funds its schools, at all levels.

Deep History

Growing up in Vancouver, Canada, I was lucky enough to spend my summers and many of my weekends on Bowen Island. We stayed in a small cabin in a group of identical pink cabins, and ran with a mixed-age group of kids, fellow escapees from the city, running, riding bikes, swimming, playing cards, making up running games, and simply hanging out, deliciously free of parents.

Like many, I had a very difficult parent growing up, and the scars run deep. It was at school where I found approval and acceptance, and the further I went the better it felt. When I began my master’s program I finally fit. In grad school in the US I was suddenly thrown into a world of affirmative action. Women were everywhere, as professors and fellow graduate students, in numbers that reflected real life, and it was as though I were inhaling fully, filling my lungs with oxygen for the first time. I hadn’t realized how oppressed I was, existing all those years in male dominated settings, even with wonderful teachers and mentors. For the first time I was free to just be.

Some teachers along the way were pivotal: two men, both math teachers whose names I’ve sadly forgotten, one in Grade 6 the other in Grade 9, were pivotal. I began to find my feet. High school biology teacher Mr. Hallet was terrific. Watching me dissecting a very large worm, he made my day by asking “how are you doing Dr. Tiplady?” He made high school better. And Luke Nakashima, chemistry teacher extraordinaire, was a godsend revered by many. He was the one we returned to see in the years after high school, dropping in to say hello, telling him about our doings. With “Mr. Nak,” or simply “Nak,” I learned I could excel.

In the Animal Science Department at UBC I found Professor David Shackleton teaching animal behavior classes, and incidentally, the foundations of science. “Shack” was a mentor throughout, and continued as an occasional long-distance mentor even when I went to Alaska for graduate school. Retired now, he helped many along the way. Recently I encountered a woman many years my junior who also studied with David Shackleton; we agreed that he was a great teacher who had helped each of us immensely.

A Janeite my whole life, my favorite Jane Austen novel is Pride & Prejudice; Lizzie Bennet is my hero, speaking truth to power, ruffling feathers and changing minds.

Growing up as a writer

“You’ve been writing to the newspaper again” said my father, looking at the morning paper before going to work. We were the only ones up. “Oh! Did they publish my letter? Yeah!”

Not long out of high school there were things I had to speak up about. That time I was responding to a front page story with a large photo of a man flanked by elephant tusks. The caption explained that the tusks were his financial investment. The fact of shrinking elephant populations due to poaching for ivory was ignored. I wrote in protest. That was in Vancouver, Canada.

Years later, living in Alaska, I was shocked to find, in a national park gift shop, unlabeled elephant ivory jewelry selling alongside legal, indigenous, walrus ivory sculptures. It’s not hard to tell elephant ivory from walrus ivory when you know how. I wrote again. Change resulted.

I’ve been writing to newspaper editors ever since, on many topics, whether conservation related (keeping cats indoors during bird migration season), or business and community related (provision of slaughter houses to support rural economies), or on democracy (access to healthcare, acceptance of immigrants, or simple tolerance for hearing different opinions.)

You can say quite a bit in 200 or 250 words, but sometimes more is needed. I now aspire to write longer, meatier pieces, including a book length project well underway. When I was farming I often heard “your stories are so funny, you should write them down,” to which I always responded “that book has been written.” But, some stories are worth telling, and sometimes they fit well into a longer narrative. My task now is to make the leap from animated anecdote to well-told story on the printed page. Becoming a writer, learning to write stories that work, is a labor of love. I am truly enjoying this new adventure, becoming a story teller.