Neil succeeded at coming into being about 48 hours after the Montreal Olympics managed the same thing—though he was nowhere near Montreal. He was on the same campus where his dad worked—though such things weren’t immediately important to him at the time. After some pathetic attempts at crunches he began walking a few years later and then started to play guitar about a decade after that. He did the best he could to navigate the world despite his short attention span and eventually relocated to Boston, then to England, then to Montreal (finally), and managed some extensive accidental travelling before landing in Toronto during the final month of 2007.

Through it all Neil has had a number of cats. Here are their names: Snaffy (?–1991), George (?–1998), Siksik (July 1, 2004–February 17, 2015), Lola (July 1, 2004–present), Cairo (March 30th, 2012–February 8, 2019), and Xena (March 17, 2016–present).

Neil is a happy member of So Long Seven and enjoys playing music with Chloé Watkinson and many others. This is in addition to the lonely game of the solo guitarists which he loves so well.

Neil owes a lot to his teachers over the years. The main hitters on this list are Tony McManus, Charlie Banacos, Mark White, Garrison Fewell, Steve Carter, Lee Kozak, and Allen Ayers.

When not playing music Neil works very hard at being the world’s worst carpenter. This tests his saintly wife’s patience and fulfills some weird need he has to aggressively do poor work.