d leonard freeston has travelled extensively - from Beijing and Bora Bora to Budapest and Baja - but his beloved Montreal has always been home. After studying science at McGill University and obtaining Distinction in Honours philosophy from Concordia University, he worked as a rock and jazz critic, a mycologist, a rock drummer, a recording engineer, a merchant seaman, a carnival barker, and a zookeeper. Some years ago he wrote an enthusiastically received play called Birth Rite, using the pseudonym Eliot Carroll. Lately, while his wife runs the tropical plant business he and she founded three decades ago, freeston day-trades on the New York Stock Exchange between bouts of writing.