Val Innes

Val Innes has an M.A. and M.Ed. in English and Education and has been a member of Quirk-e since its start in 2006. Val is a transplanted Scot, first to Winnipeg in 1958, then BC in 1991. Val has taught university, college and high school in Manitoba and BC. She has travelled to Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and Mexico. She loves the sun and water — rivers, lakes or sea. She retired from university teaching in 2015 with more time to spend with friends and reading, traveling, painting, building, and writing. She’s a lesbian feminist and activist who has worked, both personally and professionally, at making the world a better, more equal place since the 1970s, teaching, volunteering, organizing, writing, marching, and protesting to help bring about positive change.

Val was a member of Rainbow Bridge in 2023 and 2024, with a Circle of Hope in Rainbow Refugee, a Canada-wide community organization founded by Chris Morrissey which helps LGBTQ2S+ people seeking refugee status in Canada. Val’s writing appears in Basically Queer: An Intergenerational Introduction to LGBTQA2S+ Lives; Sharing Our Journeys; several Quirk-e anthologies, including Together We Stand: Queer Elders Speak Out which she co-edited; and I Want to Meet You There. Val has been the editor and did the layout for the last six zines produced by the Quirk-e Ziners.