Gerald N. J. Mercer has been an educator in Newfoundland and Labrador for twenty-eight years. He remembers walking to and from school in the fall, filling his pockets with horse chestnuts that had fallen from neighbourhood trees. Although he tried many different ways of preparing them for battle, the oven method seemed to work best. Gerald Mercer lives with his wife, Daphne, and three children, Rebecca, Andrew, and Simeon, in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador.