Neil McKenty Live

Catharine McKenty grew up on her grandparents' farm, "Donlands," then eight miles outside the Toronto city limits on Don Mills Road. She went in every day to Bishop Strachan School, where she won scholarships in French and German. After taking a degree in English at Victoria College, University of Toronto, she spent four winters as a volunteer in the mining area of post-war Germany with an international group of young people involved in reconstruction.Catharine served as Research Editor for Pace, a magazine for young people, based in Los Angeles and New York, and linked with the international musical group Up With People.Next came a stint as a speechwriter for the Ontario Minister of Education in Toronto. At that time she met her future husband, author-broadcaster Neil McKenty on the dance floor.Catharine worked at the Reader's Digest; she published Polly of Bridgewater Farm: An Unknown Irish Story; worked alongside Neil on the biography of John Main; and with Neil co-authored a best-seller on the early days of Laurentian skiing: Skiing Legends and the Laurentian Lodge Club.Catharine's latest book, Riding the Elephant: Surviving and loving in a bipolar marriage tells of her journey with husband and once Montreal's top-rated English radio host, Neil McKenty. Catharine has spent her adult life being a voice for those who couldn't be heard. She aims to empower others who care deeply about someone affected with bipolar disorder. Paul Belyea says of Riding the Elephant: "Your book is about becoming, about the perfection of potentiality, rising ascendants of the spirits. It is by turns tender and wistful, euphoric and tragic, romantic and rhapsodic. It resonates and oscillates ceaselessly. And of all the words laid forth so carefully, so excitedly, none are more perfect than the mantra "grateful beyond measure." Gratitude is what we should always wear, as a noble raiment, clothing us in the garb of angels while we attend the myopic rhythms of daily life. It is an exquisite phrase and upon reading it, a clear bell peals in my mind."