Freeman Baxter Cull was born in 1949 in Englee, on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, where he completed his high school education. He taught school for a year and a half, after which he studied navigation for six months at the College of Fisheries in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In 1969 he secured employment with the Canada Post Corporation. He has served as postmaster in Englee for a quarter of a century. His early summers were spent as a fisherman with his late father, and his days out of school in the winters, as a logger, giving him firsthand experience with both walks of life. His hobbies are carpentry (he built a “dream house”), organic gardening, voice, and music (he writes songs, poems, etc.). He says that if he had been asked at an early age what he planned to do in life, writing would not have been in his top 50 choices. However, oral storytelling was always a family tradition. But he states, “I’m the first scribe in my family to dip my quill in ink and roll out the parchment.” Writer-friendly, Earl B. Pilgrim’s keen perception of Freeman’s writing ability was what sparked this latest facet of his life. Freeman claims that Earl was—and still is—his greatest mentor. Freeman did not rely on personal knowledge when writing When Bells Toll in the North, as he did for his first book, Am I the Other Man? However, he brags that he has had the luck to live in a community where the older people still have vivid memories and are happy to chat about the early days. Freeman says he has tons of stores in his head just waiting to come out. While he freely admits that he can sell stamps and money orders best, he gives himself ten out of ten for plying his pen as a writer. Freeman Cull is married to the former Glenda Joan Thompson of Bay Roberts, Newfoundland. They have four children: Hollis, Nicole, Terri-Lynn, and Alison. Freeman has travelled across Canada, the United States, and Europe. He maintains that he has never met a stranger! He could be called “the man with a million friends.”

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