Jersey girl Melanie Cutting came to the Townships in 1972 when her application to work at Champlain College in Montreal was redirected to the Lennoxville campus. Thirty-three years and two children later, she retired as the Director of Student Services at Champlain. In 1990 she became the first graduate of the Professional Writing in English program at Université de Sherbrooke. Since her retirement, she has been active in writing, editing, translating and volunteer work, sometimes combining all four. This is her first foray into Clear Writing, being more accustomed to producing Byzantine but humourous prose forms.
Jan Draper grew up on a dairy farm in Brome in the Eastern Townships. For many years she taught English and International Studies at Champlain College, Lennoxville. She continues to work on international education projects primarily in the Amerindian communities in Guyana, South America. She began taking photographs in 1997 while working on a Unicef project there.
The quotations accompanying the photographs are taken from “Historical Quotes on Plain Language and Writing Simply” found at Plain Language.gov. http://www.plainlanguage.gov/resources/quotes/historical.cfm