Joy Davis has always lived on islands – although hers are on British Columbia’s wild west coast rather than in the Caribbean. She was born in a small logging town on Vancouver Island and lived with her family on such islands and coastal outposts as Haida Gwaii and the Sunshine Coast. The whole family was surprised to find itself living in Vancouver in the late ‘50s – but that didn’t last long. One weekend when she was 10, her parents bought a small, unoccupied island in BC’s Gulf Islands and life was never quite the same again. They began the grand adventure of making a home and a life away from the conveniences of the city. The experience of helping build houses and docks, clearing trails, digging clams, collecting endless boxes of firewood, commuting to school in a nearby town by boat, and messing around on the water gives her an enduring love for islands and island life.

Joy went on to earn an MA in museum studies and a PhD in educational studies and has recently retired from the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island where she enjoyed a career managing cultural heritage programs for many years before taking on the role of Director of Community Relations. She still spends time on Bath Island, and because she continues to be fascinated by intrepid people who choose island lifestyles, she recently wrote a book entitled Complicated Simplicity: Island Life in the Pacific Northwest (Heritage House Publishing 2019).