From a farming town of 6,000 to the bright lights of a city of 3 million — then back again. Met her husband of many years in high school. This all sounds quite all-American, but Barbara Fletcher is pure Canadian, thank you very much.
OZY’s branded editor has made a career of curation and content strategy, working with words in the context of Web since the ’90s. She’s spent time in many a corner of business and journalism, but most of all, it’s the living she’s done that makes her so OZY. Barb is a real live poet — they still exist! — who traded versions of her one and only book-length manuscript with teacher D.M. Thomas via mail because he refused to email. But this Anglophile/Scot-ophile is no luddite: A tech nerd too, she could once build a website from scratch. That said, she can’t figure out how to turn on the television. When her husband travels, he leaves her how-to notes.
Barb is a happy non-mom who has almost given up one of her favorite (excuse us, favourite) things in life — seeing live music — because chit-chatting smartphone-wielding audiences have become so damn thuggish. And, well, there’s COVID too. When she’s not beaming into OZY edit meetings via Google Hangout or finding the freshest stuff for OZY devotees to devour, she is probably in a spin class, hiking or wandering Toronto’s back alleys with her camera.
