Member Profile

Pat Hancock was the eldest of four children born into a typical Steel Town family – dad working shifts at Stelco in Hamilton, mom staying at home taking care of everyone and everything on a very tight budget and taking on odd jobs when strike threats loomed, and both parents always emphasizing the importance of getting a good education. Pat absolutely loved school, reading, and riding her bike, and even back then, liked writing stories. But she never dreamed she would end up doing that for a living.

Pat saved enough from summer jobs as a waitress and a playground leader that, with a few loans and bursaries, she was able to head off to university right after Grade 13. She completed two years of the Household Science program at Guelph before deciding her financial situation might look a little brighter if she went to teacher’s college and got a job two years sooner than she had planned. She moved back home and did that, and then began teaching science at her old high school, Cathedral Girls’ High. While working there, she completed a BA at McMaster University, and then added English courses to her teaching load that, over time, also included Physics and Biology.

Pat retired from teaching in 1973 to become a full-time parent. Reading to her children sparked her interest in writing for children, and taking a course called “Stretch What You Know and Write for Children” at the YWCA got her started.
Since 1981, several of Pat’s short stories and articles have appeared in language arts readers and social studies texts, and in magazines intended for teachers and/or students. In 1987, she began writing teacher's guides for many of Scholastic's Big Books, and in 1988 became a contributing editor for Scholastic Canada's teachers' magazine, Classroom. She was also project consultant for HarperCollins' Whole Language Discovery Boxes.

Her first book, a sticker book about unicorns, was published in 1988, and she’s been writing non-fiction regularly since then. She loves doing that because she’s always learning something new when doing her research, especially research about Canadian history. She has also taught “Writing for Children” continuing education courses at both the University of Toronto and Ryerson, and continues to do freelance writing, editing and fact-checking for the children's market. She’s been an active member of CANSCAIP since shortly after it was founded, and served as its President from 1991 to 1993.