Keith J. Valentine

Keith emigrated to Canada from England in 1976 at the age of 22, having completed 6 years of service with the Royal Air Force. His childhood was spent in Chingford, a suburb in East London, and he was later sent to the Royal Wanstead School for 4 years, a boarding school, also in East London. After graduating from Chingford High School (for all you soccer fans, David Beckham went to that school!), after 18 months, he took an electronics engineering apprenticeship in the RAF at Locking and later studied the supply trade at Hereford, working as a supplier at Halton and Brawdy, two of the stations he was based at in the UK.

After living in Thunder Bay and Fredericton for about 9 months, he relocated to the Toronto area and spent time living downtown and also in Scarborough, Etobicoke and Oakville for about 5 years. He then married and moved to Hamilton where he remained for almost 20 years, employed in several materials management positions.

Feeling that he had paid his dues to the materials management industry, Keith's experience in the computer field began in 1988 when he enrolled in the Computer Programming, Systems Analysis & Design course at the Toronto School of Business in Hamilton (see Keith's résumé). Within two weeks the class had dwindled from 20 students to four. He knew at that point he had the aptitude to continue to the end. The end came almost a year-and-a-half later, when he graduated with the 3 other students that 'stuck it out' to the very end.

After graduating from two courses at Mohawk College of Applied Arts & Technology: C Programming Language and IBM AS/400 & RPG Programming, at first, finding suitable employment in the IT field proved quite challenging, through perseverance he landed a 6-month contract as a network consultant with INTEC Information Technology Corporation, a Toronto consulting firm in 1993, providing technical support for subsidiaries of the PHH Corporation.

Another contract paved the way for dealing with the public after studying PC Maintenance & Repair, also at Mohawk. This time an 18-month on-site support position as a PC technician involving travel between numerous Grand & Toy retail stores in southwestern Ontario, providing PC installation and maintenance consulting.

Following Definity Audix PBX Administration training at AT&T in North York, he was employed for 2 years as a regional telecommunications support representative for subsidiaries of Fritz Companies, Inc. in Mississauga and Etobicoke.

Then for the next two-and-a-half years, Keith contracted for Application Enabling Inc., a Toronto consulting firm, engaged as a network officer at OPSEU Pension Trust and as a workstation analyst at the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

An 8-month contract with CNC Global Consulting at London Life at their offices in London and Cambridge, as a network infrastructure specialist, furthered Keith's expertise in deploying Microsoft technology to hundreds of workstations across Canada remotely.

In 2001, having relocated from Hamilton to Burlington, Keith consulted for Ian Martin, and contracted at Hydro One Networks in Toronto for 6 months.

After graduating from the Introduction to Java Programming course at Sheridan College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Oakville, Keith became involved in web development and Internet marketing. Between 2002 and 2007 he designed, developed & hosted multiple Internet marketing web pages to market digital products using eCommerce technology as a home-based business, having relocated from the Halton area to Welland.

In 2008, Keith designed, developed and maintained a website for South Ends Mobile, a mobile hairdressing salon and catering service in Thorold, and contracted as a PHP programmer for The Agency, LLC in Tulsa, performing online maintenance and troubleshooting tasks using PHP server-side scripting, to support various marketing websites for an Internet marketing service.

Later that year, Keith moved with his partner Marie, to Manitouwadge to set up an information technology and web development consulting service, providing computer services to residential clients in the local community in addition to offering freelance web development and application programming under the name Husky Web Design.

Besides working hard at setting up his business, Keith spends much of his time with their dog Trooper.

Unfortunately Marie has fibromyalgia, which keeps her house-bound a lot of the time but she does make an appearance downtown now and again!