Teresa Toten
Biography
Teresa Toten
Teresa’s earliest and most fervent ambition was to grow up and take her rightful place among the other mermaids. When cruel and insensitive adults crushed that dream by insisting that mermaids did not exist, Teresa settled on the more mature aspiration of becoming an intergalactic astronaut. Then she realized that math would likely be involved. So, in the end, Teresa went to Trinity College at the University of Toronto where she got a BA and then an MA in Political Economy taking great care not to take a single English or Creative Writing class. The only thing Teresa knew for sure was that she was never ever going to be a writer. That would be silly, fanciful and well, unrealistic.
In the very beginning and in first of many moves, Teresa arrived in Canada from Zagreb, Croatia when she was 13 days old. She liked what she saw and decided to stay. Although she mainly grew up in Toronto, Teresa moved at least 17 different times. She has lived in Delhi Ontario, Montreal, Ottawa and New York. Throughout all of these moves the only constants in her life were Mama, books and an increasingly well-developed sense of how to make friends --- fast.
As soon as Teresa graduated from U of T she married Ken and hightailed it to Montreal. There she wrote and broadcast a few on air pieces for Radio Canada International, which gave her an appetite for world domination so she moved to Ottawa to begin by taking over the Canadian Federal Government. Unsuspecting semi-powerful people gave Teresa fascinating jobs that she had no business doing including working on a Royal Commission on Conditions of Foreign Service, helping to build the new National Gallery and the Museum of Civilization, and toiling at the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security. Once Teresa sorted out Canadian culture and world peace, the Totens moved back to Toronto in order to make two brilliant and beautiful daughters, Sasha and Nikki.
Teresa Toten
