Dr. Linda Cameron has had a long career of working with children of all ages. She is the mother of three, step mother of two, and grandmother of five. Linda grew up close to nature on the shore of Lake Simcoe and in the Toronto Beaches playing in the ravine and learning to sail by age five. Summer camp with her kids and outdoor education with her school students was an annual delight. As a Professor at the Ontario Institute of Education she supervised dozens of theses often on curriculum topics of the environment, play, drama and the arts. She is an internationally recognized authority on early childhood education working with the World Bank in Vietnam, with UNICEF in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, and starting a Graduate Program in Education in Pakistan along with Oxford University. She has been a leader in literacy education co-writing the K-8 language arts series, Reflexions, for Scholastic. Most recently she co-created a curriculum literature series focused on wellness entitled “WellAware” for Pearson. She is most passionate about the education of children through free play in natural places, fostering imagination and creativity through stories and all the arts, and building kids’ confidence, self-reliance and independence through socially contextualized experience. As a resident in the Beaver Valley she relishes walking the trails with family and friends, canoeing the river with her son, gardening with her husband, and delighting in the vistas of the valley.