Alicia McKenzie teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University in the History Department and the Medieval Studies Program. Her own research focuses on the social history of Merovingian Gaul.
Class: Sorcerers, pornocrats, and zombie popes: the feudal church in crisis

Andrea Austin has been wire knitting for ten years. However, polymer clay, precious metal clay, fused glass, and other wire work projects, including jewellery weight chain mail, also make considerable claims on her free time.
Class: Viking Wire Weaving

Bernie Roehl has been organizing events in the local kinky community for the past twenty years. He has taught dozens of workshops on various aspects of BDSM, ranging from general introductions to more advanced topics. Based at the University of Waterloo, he has diverse interests including improvisational theatre.
Class: 50 Shades of History - a look at non-traditional sexual practices in history

Bruce Blackistone describes himself as a "retired civil servant (National Park Service), part time blacksmith, and seasonal Viking ship captain." Active in medieval reenactment for over 43 years, he was one of the founders of the Markland Confederation and the Longship Company. He has skippered various vessels based on Viking longships for 40 years and has forged, crafted, or sewn numerous domestic, religious, and martial items from the early medieval period. In terms of literary output, he is best known as the author of Beowabbit, and is an actual footnote in the Beowulf Reader. Venues for his lectures and demonstrations have included the South Street Seaport Museum; the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia; the Smithsonian Institution for their Vikings 2000 exhibit; L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada for the Leif Erikson Millennial Celebration in 2000; the American Swedish Museum in Philadelphia; and the Kalamazoo International Medieval Congress.
Class: The Battle of Maldon; Reality at Four Removes

Catherine Ollerhead DeSantis has been associated with various 19th century living history groups for the past 12 years as a cannoneer and side saddle equestrian. Currently she is writing a Master's thesis in Rural History at the University of Guelph. She is working on a companion book documenting 19th century housework and women's social networking. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Dufferin County Museum and Archives, and is Vice Chairman of the Canadian Branch of the Richard III Society.
Class: Return of the King; Richard's Re-interment

David Tristan traces his interest in Viking ships to the magnificent ship drawings in the Hal Foster "Prince Valiant" comic strip, a beautifully executed wooden model of the Gokstad ship he saw as a child in a Rochester, New York museum, and the infamously inaccurate Aurora plastic Viking ship model of the 1950's. After picking up his first movie camera and realizing he'd found a way to make a living without doing a lick of real work, he found employment at a TV station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania soon after graduating from Boston University in nineteen seventy-mumble. He joined the Longship Company in 1979, just in time to shoot a news story about the launch of the second of the company's vessels, the Fyrdraca. In 1990 Bruce Blackistone suggested turning the poem about the Battle of Maldon into a movie, and the rest, as they say, is history, though some might want to call it something else. Since he couldn't attend the conference, David made a video about the making of "Maldon", which will, if nothing else, demonstrate conclusively why he stays BEHIND the camera.
Class: The Battle of Maldon; Reality at Four Removes

Dr. Scott Gallimore received his PhD (2011) and MA (2006) in Classics with a specialization in Mediterranean Archaeology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He also attended the University of Toronto where he completed an Honours BA in Classics and Archaeology in 2004. Prior to joining Laurier, he was the Crake Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Classics at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. He also spent 2 years studying in Athens, Greece, at the American School of Classical Studies - first as the John Williams White Fellow and then as the Edward Capps Fellow.
Class: Significant or Insignificant? The Impact of Disasters in the Archaeological Record

Dylan McCorquodale is a fourth-year double-major in History and Medieval Studies. He has long been enchanted with both theatre and medieval history, and was blessed with the opportunity to both complete an undergraduate thesis on medieval theatre and direct the medieval play Everyman.. Following the impending conclusion to his undergraduate degree, he intends to pursue an MA, an MFA, and eventually a PhD. His career ambitions include academia, journalism, and other careers that involve getting paid to sit in a room and read books.
Classes: The Death and Resurrection of the Medieval Theatre
               Recreating Medieval Theatre

Fred Blonder is a Network Engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. He has been an active member of the Longship Company, Ltd., since 1980, regularly rowing and sailing their replica Viking ships (as well as the Greek Trireme, "Olympias", twice). He studies (and collects) historical calculating and measuring instruments, and puts them to practical use when possible.
Class: Sewage-Disposal Practices in Victorian London

Janet Lloyd works in food retail. She has cooked professionally and catered, as well as volunteering to cook for several Richard the Third society events and 36 years within the Society for Creative Anachronism. The kitchen is one of her favourite places to be. Reading books is one of the few things that is right up there with it. So cooking history combines both loves.
Class: Food and ambiance, translating the medieval feast to the modern table

Jerry Penner is The Chain Mail Guy; he has been selling finished chain mail, knitting rings, and offering chain mail workshops since 1996. He published Chain Mail Basics in 1996 when he realized there was no formal lanuguage to describe knitting patterns to other people, similar to crochet or yarn knitting. His work can be found at various fairs in Southwestern Ontario including the Fergus Highland Games and the Royal Medieval Faire in Waterloo, and on his website at www.chainmailguy.com.
Classes: Chainmail - Beyond the Basics
               Chainmail for Beginners

Jo Duke started medieval recreation about 20 years ago, and unleashed a passion for creating historical garments, dyeing using natural and traditional dyes and all kinds of weaving. Known variously as Jorunn, Jhone of Wodecott, or Joan Woodcote, a weaver or tailleur, tradeswoman, goodwife and mother, she loves to relax with a beer and a game of chance and strategy.
Class: Cut, Conservation and Consumption

Karen Peterson works in Resource Sharing at the University of Waterloo library where she enjoys the opportunities the job provides to further her own research efforts and those of others. Over the last decade Karen has demonstrated or lectured on various parts of the Viking Era textile process at multiple museums in North America and attended an archaeological fieldschool on Gotland in 2011. Karen's primary interests lie in spinning, weaving, dyeing, and naalbinding. Karen is a member of the Dark Ages Recreation Company, and travelled to L'Anse aux Meadows in 2010 and 2012 to demonstrate many parts of the Viking Era textile process.
Class: Textile Processes in the Viking Age

Kelly Ridley is a costume historian hailing from Merlin, Ontario. In the SCA Laura Battista is a Venitian lady who has been doing medieval dance for longer than she cares to admit.
Classes: Beginners Dance: English Country
               Beginners Dance: Bransles

Mark Edward Patchett is a software developer and father. He has been involved in medieval recreation with the Society for Creative Anachronism for over 20 years, and the living history group Regia Anglorum for about 10 years. Sir Edward the Red is a Norman Knight who fought at the battle of Hastings, and later settled down in northern England where he married a Saxon lady. (How their son ended up as a Viking is still a mystery.)
Classes: Naalbinding 101
               Flint and Steel Fire Striking

Melanie Robbins is an Accounting Clerk who lives in Kitchener, Ontario. Lady Gwendyon Casgudcath is a young Lady from Wales whose interests lie in fighting and learning...anything.
Class: Kumihimo - The Art of Japanese Cordmaking

Neil Peterson is a technical director and project manager in the software industry and a student of Archaeology at Wilfrid Laurier University. In his spare time he works with museums, libraries, schools, and various groups to promote an appreciation of Viking Era Scandinavia, and the application of project management to museums and historical projects such as this conference. His primary research interest over the last 20 years has been applications of experimental archaeology to the anthropological and technological processes of the Viking Era, specifically including iron smelting and bead making. He is a charter member of the local PMI chapter, a member of ExArc and the Ontario Museum Association, and a member of multiple re-enactment groups including the Dark Ages Recreation Company.
Classes: Experiment and Experience
               Hnefatafl - A Viking Good Time!

Pauline Grondin is a professional storyteller, heritage performer, historical interpreter, reenactor and musician who has been telling stories and making music all of her life to listeners from the age of 2 to 102, across Ontario, Nova Scotia and Great Britain.
Pauline is a 10th generation French Canadian with an Irish citizenship. In recognition of her contribution to fellow Canadians through her storytelling and music, Pauline was given the honour of having her name included on the Ireland Canada Monument in Vancouver, B.C. which was established in 2012.
Pauline's stories and music have also been recorded for Route 1812 in Southwestern Ontario and the GTA, the Southwestern Ontario Barn Quilt Trail, and History Television.
Pauline has recorded four CD's telling stories of Canadian pioneer women. She has also written a number of children's history books and stories for the young at heart.
Class: Loyal to the Crown

Richard Schweitzer is a private school teacher from Orangeville, ON. A graduate from the University of Waterloo in history, art and music, he has been involved in living history and museum work since working in the 1980s at the 1914 living museum Doon Heritage Crossroads in Kitchener. Through DARC, Richard has presented Norse culture at several museums including Woodstock Museum, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Cranbrook Museum (MI), Haffenreffer Museum (RI), Peterborough Centennial Museum and most recently L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Currently, Richard is busy reconstructing dances and music from the Gresley manuscript, and recreating tools and other artifacts from the norse period.
Classes: Pewter Casting for Beginners
               Buffons: Dancing with Swords
               The Kalevala: Stories from the Northlands

Robert Schweitzer is a high school chemistry teacher with fifteen years of weaving experience. He was a guest instructor at WASOON 2008, a weavers and spinners conference, and has taught numerous classes across the province including many previous FITP sessions. In the fall of 2008, several of his pieces were part of the 'Grave Goods' exhibition at the Woodstock museum. He is currently working on recreating a 16th century Ethiopian tablet-woven curtain that was discovered by Prof. Michael Gervers of the University of Toronto in a cave church in Abba Yohanni.
Classes: Introduction to Tablet Weaving
               Advanced Tablet Weaving
               Introduction to Glass Bead Making

Roy Underhill, the instructor for the Cotswold Morris segment, has been dancing Morris since 1982. Instructor (Foreman) of Cold Barn Morris since 1996, he has danced morris in many places -- in pubs, on mountain tops, and in the high Arctic and loves it when the group goes to traditional Morris gatherings, called Ales, where we dance, feast, sing and make merry.
Class: Morris Dancing

Sarah is an archaeologist-turned-law clerk with an interest in Norse history. She has taken these two pursuits to study how laws can shape culture, and how culture can shape laws.When not doing her day job, she can be found reading, baking, occasionally setting things on fire and melting glass, and spending the occasional weekend chasing zombies with an axe.
Class: An Eye for an Eye is Expensive - a look at law, life and litigation in early Iceland

Stephen B. Pearl is a multiple published author writing in the speculative fiction genera. He is a past member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and a self professed generalist. As comfortable in the ninth century as the twenty third, though the twenty first gives him some problems, he endeavours to bring a realistic taste to even his most fanciful works. "Fiction can educate in a way no other form of writing can because it slips past our barriers to learning and teaches the reader unaware. The author has an obligation to be accurate in what they write because of this."
Class: Facts for Fantasy Fiction

V.M. Roberts enjoys dead languages, like Old Norse, and dead modes of transport, like rowing longships and driving steam locomotives. He is the Assistant Chief Engineer at the Toronto Railway Museum and a longtime student of the Viking Age. His deepest obsessions include screw threads and Apron Dresses.
Classes: The Toronto, Grey and Bruce Narrow Gauge Railway, 1873-1883
               Practical Steam Engineering
               Project planning for restoration and reconstruction

Contact us if you have any questions or suggestions