It all started when…

Louis Gagliardi M.S. Ed, recently retired after a thirty year teaching career in Toronto.  His students remember an inspiring and unconventional personality that brought humour to their lives and who always modelled a passion for art, poetry, history, and the pursuit of knowledge.

The overarching theme in his life began on a night in 1971, at age fifteen, when he first heard Don McLean’s homage to Van Gogh. Through that portal his journey of discovery, experience, and identity was set, affecting every personal and professional aspect of his life and from which this book now springs.

Louis has a Masters of Education and an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Criticism from the University of Western Ontario.  A widower with two children, Emily and Vincent, Louis continues his inspired mission to contribute Sheppard’s visual verse to the narrative of Canadian art history.