Author's Biography
Cheryl Lynn was born on a Canadian army base in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and proudly claims the entire country as her hometown. A self-described “army brat,” her earliest memories are stitched across the vast Canadian landscape—from prairie dawns to coastal rains, each region shaping her understanding of place, identity, and belonging.
At nine years old, she travelled cross-country in the back of a white Ford Fairlane, journeying from CFB Kingston to her father’s final posting at Jericho Beach, Vancouver. That two-month odyssey—through the stark hills of Sudbury, the endless skies of the Prairies, the majestic peaks of Jasper, and the mist-soaked forests of B.C.—ignited a lifelong fascination with how geography shapes people and stories. Each shift in landscape felt like turning a new page in Canada’s unfinished narrative.
A graduate of the University of British Columbia and raised in a family of storytellers and poets, Cheryl grew up on a steady rhythm of fables and Robert W. Service ballads. Her work is deeply rooted in Canadian history, drawing inspiration from real events and the lives of ordinary people responding with quiet resilience to extraordinary times.
Cheryl Lynn was born on a Canadian army base in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and proudly claims the entire country as her hometown. A self-described “army brat,” her earliest memories are stitched across the vast Canadian landscape—from prairie dawns to coastal rains, each region shaping her understanding of place, identity, and belonging.
At nine years old, she travelled cross-country in the back of a white Ford Fairlane, journeying from CFB Kingston to her father’s final posting at Jericho Beach, Vancouver. That two-month odyssey—through the stark hills of Sudbury, the endless skies of the Prairies, the majestic peaks of Jasper, and the mist-soaked forests of B.C.—ignited a lifelong fascination with how geography shapes people and stories. Each shift in landscape felt like turning a new page in Canada’s unfinished narrative.
A graduate of the University of British Columbia and raised in a family of storytellers and poets, Cheryl grew up on a steady rhythm of fables and Robert W. Service ballads. Her work is deeply rooted in Canadian history, drawing inspiration from real events and the lives of ordinary people responding with quiet resilience to extraordinary times.
My Journey As a Writer
Every person has two biological families.
What that relationship looks like varies. Some are raised by deeply devoted parents; others are abandoned at birth—like a cuckoo’s egg, left in a strange nest for others to raise. I was fortunate to have the former.
My father’s family were settlers in Canada before it was a country—some arriving directly from England, others crossing up from the American colonies as Loyalists.
My mother’s family was Bermudian—ambitious and resilient. Some bought their freedom; others were emancipated under the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which freed over 800,000 people of African descent across most of the British Empire.
My writing explores the intersections of that heritage—imagining what it meant to build a life in the unforgiving wilderness of the Northwest Territories, or to navigate a world that judged your worth by the colour of your skin, in the rigid hierarchy of the Victorian Empire.
I come from ambitious people. Loyal people. People who, despite the limits placed on them, fought and bled for a better life. Who believed in the power of education, in the value of hard work, and in building lives that mattered.
I recommend this path of self-exploration. It will take you places you never expected—and it’s well worth the journey.
TO BE CONTINUED