Meet a Community Elder: Carol Good

Former corporate consultant Carol Good turned to writing poetry later in life, and recently published a book of her own poetry, ‘Alive & 65: A Celebration’.

March 20, 2023 | Gail Grant | Over the Next Hill

For Carol Good, creative writing was once a “sidebar activity” in a jam-packed life dedicated to raising a family, running her own business – and volunteering.

The 66-year-old, who grew up in Don Mills, attributes her propensity for volunteering to being “voluntold” by her mother at an early age. She recalls joining her family to help at Toronto Boxing Day dinners for people who were homeless, and she was a Brownie and a Girl Guide. She also spent Saturday mornings dressed in the “dorky blue-and-white-striped outfit” of a “volunteen” at North York General Hospital.

Former corporate consultant Carol Good turned to writing poetry later in life. Photo by Pete Paterson.

Here in Headwaters and beyond, Carol has served on many boards and committees, including Caledon’s Environmental Advisory Committee and the Mississauga Humane Society. She remains on the board of Albion Hills Community Farm and is past president of the board of the Gestalt Institute of Toronto.

And during her many years with the Bolton and District Horticultural Society, her Caledon property hosted the society’s annual plant sale. Carol and her husband, Doug Prince, took up residence in the property’s distinctive octagonal heritage home nearly 30 years ago.

As a young woman, after earning a BSc in chemistry at Queen’s University, followed by an MBA at York University, she launched her professional career. But when her two sons, James and William, were youngsters, she earned certification as a professional facilitator and started her own consulting firm, specializing in corporate team building and strategic plan development. The Art Gallery of Ontario and Caledon Community Services were among her clients. Operating the business “made it easier for me to determine my own hours and allowed me to help out more at the boys’ schools,” she says.

Her career also led her to writing, though mostly of the technical sort – reports, proposals and the like. Then, in the 1990s, she joined a writing group and began writing poetry, crediting the precision and pithiness required by technical writing with inspiring the spare, direct style of her poems. She went on to work with the Massachusetts-based Amherst Writers & Artists, and during the pandemic, facilitated online workshops for writers.

Carol recently published a book of her own poetry, Alive & 65: A Celebration, and is now focused on growing as a creative writer. Of her journey so far, she says, “I don’t know where life is taking me, but I try to take advantage of interesting opportunities as they emerge.”