David Waltner-Toews's vocational interests and accomplishments span the fields of science and literature. He has published about 100 peer-reviewed scholarly papers, half a dozen books of poetry, a collection of short stories, a murder mystery, and a book about diseases people get from animals. He is also a professor in the department of population medicine at the University of Guelph, the founding president of Verterinarians without Borders/Veterinaires sans Frontieres, founding president of the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health, and the arts and culture editor for the jounal EcoHealth. His work has taken him overseas to numerous Asian countries.

Toews was born into a Mennonite family in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1948. He received a B.A. from Goshen College in 1971, a doctorate of veterinary medicine (D.M.V.) from the Unversity of Saskatchewan in 1978, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Guelph in 1985. In 1971, he married Kathy Waltner and hyphenated his last name. The couple has two children.

Waltner-Toews started writing poetry early in life; the first poem he remembers writing was in fifth grade, as a punishment for talking in class. His teacher liked the poem so much that it was published in the Manitoba Teacher's Society Journal.

Much of Waltner-Toews's poetry focuses on his Russian Mennonite descent. In some ways, he sees creative writing as an alternative to the culture in which he was raised, which was "steeped in Mennonite history" and fraught with dichotomies. One the one hand, his poetry reveals an inevitable attachment to his ethnic and religious roots. But, he appreciates that "you can talk about things...with poetry and in literature that you can't in traditional Mennonite plain-speaking where it's either this or it's that. Life is usually more complicated than that. It's both this and that. Literature enables you to talk about those kinds of things." (Click here for more quotes from Waltner-Toews.)

Waltner-Toews's most recently published book of poetry is The Complete Tante Tina: Mennonite Blues and Recipes (2004). This volume is a collection of the author's popular poems narrated by a Canadian Mennonite woman whose reflections on life are both profound and humorous. The book also includes recipes for traditional Russian Mennonite food.

Through his committed attention to science and nature, his exploration of regional and global communities of people, and his quirky sense of humor, Waltner-Toews has created a unique and interesting body of work. In a 2007 e-mail he said, "People ask why I write poetry. It is a way of staying sane. Some would argue that I have been singularly unsuccessful."

Hostetler, Ann, ed. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003.

"The Complete Tante Tina: Mennonite Blues and Recipes." Pandora Press Publishing. 2003. 18 July 2007.

Waltner-Toews, David. E-mail Correspondence (with Anita Hooley). 16 and 17 July 2007.

Waltner-Toews, David. Personal Interview (with David Neufeld).