Elizabeth Crocker
BIOGRAPHY
Raised in Montreal by Nova Scotian parents, Liz spent most of her childhood summers in Chester. After graduating from Dalhousie University, she taught high school in Ontario. In 1969, she returned to Halifax to marry Brian Crocker and teach at the Halifax Grammar School. In 1971, she was appointed the first director of the IWK Hospital’s child life department. The next decade saw her serving a three-year term as a provincial appointee to the Halifax Board of School Commissioners, starting a regional affiliate of the national Association for the Care of Children in Hospitals, earning a master’s degree in special education, serving on the national Expert Group on Child Care in General Hospitals, and becoming the first President of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. She left the IWK in 1981, only to return as a member of the hospital’s board of directors, and started writing in earnest while being continually distracted by such interesting adventures as politics, broadcasting, mentoring young entrepreneurs and being a simulated patient for Dalhousie’s medical school.
She established Frog Hollow Bookstore in Halifax, which she sold in 1987. She co-founded Woozles Bookstore in Halifax in 1978 and continues to co-own what is now the oldest children’s bookstore in Canada. In 1992 she co-founded P’lovers Environmental Store, which now has locations in Nova Scotia and Ontario.
