About

A blogger, editor and writer, Jonathan Crowe is the author of The Map Room, a blog about maps, and DFL, a blog about last-place finishes at the Olympics. Other recent online projects include Ankylose This!, a group blog about living with ankylosing spondylitis, Gartersnake.info, a website for garter snake keepers, and Snakes on Film. Everything else usually ends up on his personal blog.

mcwetboy.com has been his personal home page since July 2001; projects of a less personal nature can be found at mcwetboy.net.

A historian by training, Jonathan has worked briefly as a journalist and at a number of government writing and editing jobs. Most recently, he worked part-time as a senior editor/writer in Health Canada's Executive Correspondence Division. (Read Jonathan's curriculum vitae.)

When not blogging, writing or correcting other people’s grammar, Jonathan raises snakes, plays the piano, and looks through his telescopes.

Jonathan was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba; he currently lives in Shawville, Quebec with his partner, Jennifer Seely, and their menagerie of two cats, a turtle, a fish, and a whole mess of snakes of which they are inordinately fond.

“Angus McWetboy” first appeared during Jonathan’s stint at the University of Waterloo, where he published a surreal e-mail newsletter for the history graduate student association in which “Angus” was a recurring character. The name meant nothing in particular (other than a vague notion that anything Scottish was inherently funny), just a few syllables that sounded funny to him at the time. “Angus” was a madman who obsessed about imported cheese products from faraway places, and the insect pests that infiltrated his stocks (cheese weevils, Tajikistan — made no sense). Most of his fellow students didn’t get the joke, and pleaded with him to tone down the newsletter before it got them into trouble with their professors.

Later on, it seemed unique and meaningless enough to use for user names, e-mail addresses and, eventually, the name of this web site. You have to admit, it’s distinctive.

Most content on this site is copyright © 1992-2010 Jonathan Crowe unless indicated otherwise (see below), and is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. This means you’re welcome to copy, distribute or display the work found on this site so long as you give him credit, leave it unaltered and don’t use it for commercial purposes.

Content on this site produced by other people, such as blog comments, material quoted or embedded in blog entries, furnished images and logos, and some photos in the Trails section, as well as content produced as work for hire, i.e., journalism presented here as part of a work portfolio, are not covered by that licence and need the permission of their respective copyright holders to copy, distribute or display them elsewhere.

E-mail addresses obtained through the contact form will not be used except in correspondence, and will not be shared except to forward a question or comment to someone who might be able to assist you. Messages sent via the contact form are subject to publication on this web site. The contact form also collects your IP address (to combat abuse) and your browser information (for troubleshooting purposes).

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