Fun Facts

Here are a few fun facts about me.

Medal

Edward Fenner and Canadian astronaut Dr. Steve MacLean each earned the same medal from York University - The President's Medal (Murray G. Ross Award) - for high academics and outstanding contributions to the University. Steve received his medal in 1977, Edward in 2010.

Sofia Loren

When Edward Fenner was a college student in the mid-1980s he spent a couple of days on the Toronto set of Courage, a TV movie starring Sofia Loren, Billy Dee Williams, Hector Elizondo, and Dan Hedaya. Edward's job was to keep her 12-year-old son Edoardo Ponti occupied and quiet on set while she worked. She was very nice and her son was very well-behaved.

Hendrik de Vries

Edward Fenner is, through his Frisian maternal grandmother Yke de Vries, related to Dutch poet and painter Hendrik de Vries. Yke and Hendrik were cousins or second-cousins (the records are incomplete).

Walking Sticks

Edward has crummy knees and is often identified by his walking sticks. His most common stick is one he picked up at an antique shop in Scotland for £20. It is a working-class stick from the late 19th century. It is dark brown, made of a single piece of blackthorn wood. Its hand-turned shaft is called a Jacobite Twist (or so he's told). The grip is merely a rounded and thicker end of the shaft; it was probably used to thump people over the head or possibly to catch an innkeeper's attention to bring another dram of Scotch. Edward is a rabologist - a collector and researcher of walking sticks.

She counted the money, he carried a gun

Edward met his wife Linda when they both worked at the same armed courier company back in the 1980s.

66,000? Wow!

Edward is a strong supporter of the literary arts. Back around 2006, as an academic experiment in the power and futility of social media protests, he founded a facebook arts support/protest group that secured over 60,000 members in the first 3 days! It topped out at around 66,000 members before Facebook lost the membership list when it transferred the site to the new protocol. Not cool, Facebook. Not cool.