About Jonathan Crowe

I’m probably best known as the author of The Map Room, a popular blog about maps, and DFL, a blog about last-place finishes at the Olympics. Other recent online projects include Gartersnake.info, a website for garter snake keepers, and Snakes on Film.

I’ve been interviewed or featured by Agence France-Presse, the BBC World Service, the Boston Globe, CBC Newsworld, CTV Newsnet, Folha de São Paolo, the Hamilton Spectator, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Ottawa Sun, Reuters, RTÉ, Sports Illustrated, the Toronto Star and the West Quebec Post, among others.

A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, I studied European history at the universities of Winnipeg, Waterloo and Alberta, which circuitously led to stints as a reporter for a small-town weekly newspaper, a writer of briefing notes, and an editor of government regulations and ministerial correspondence. (Curriculum vitæ.)

At the moment I live in Shawville, Quebec, with my partner, Jennifer Seely, and our many interesting animals. When not blogging, writing or correcting other people’s grammar, I raise snakes, play the piano, and look through my telescopes.

(Biographical materials for any purpose.)

“My Correct Views on Everything”

“My Correct Views on Everything” was the title of an essay by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski published in the Socialist Register in 1974 in response to an open letter by E. P. Thompson. In 1991, Peter Novick stole it for the title of his response to a forum in the American Historical Review about his book, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. It has been stolen again here.

This “McWetboy” Business

“Angus McWetboy” first appeared during my stint at the University of Waterloo, where I 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 me 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 my fellow students didn’t get the joke, and begged me to tone down the lunatic tone of the newsletter before it got them into trouble with their professors.

Later on, it seemed unique and meaningless enough to use as a user name and as a domain name for my home page, which lived at mcwetboy.com from 2001 to 2011. (Some older pages still reside there.)

Copyright

My photography is explicitly 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 me credit, leave it unaltered and don’t use it for commercial purposes. The work is still under copyright, however, and permission (and possibly payment) will be required for commercial and other purposes. When in doubt, ask. For more information, see the FAQ page.

For various reasons, the text of this website — the blog entries and some of the articles — is not available under a Creative Commons licence. Please ask my permission before copying, distributing, reprinting or otherwise making use of the text beyond what is generally allowed under the fair use doctrine. I take a liberal approach to fair use. Which is to say: by all means link to a blog post or article, and feel free to quote excerpts. But don’t reproduce the whole thing. (You can link to it, you know.)

Some content, such as blog comments, material quoted or embedded in blog entries, furnished images and logos, and other examples of other people’s work, as well as content produced as work for hire, i.e., journalism presented here as part of a work portfolio, need the permission of their respective copyright holders to copy, distribute or display them elsewhere.

Privacy

If you contact me, I will have your e-mail address. I will not share it with anyone unless I forward your message to someone who can respond better than I can. I may ask your permission to publish your message on this website.

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