About Murray

My name is Murray Rob Roy McGregor and and I have been head writer and editor and storyteller at Digital Folios and MurrayRobRoyMcGregor.ca for the past 13 years.

I write and edit for the web and print. I do research, online and off. More recently I have been researching stories in society and business and storytelling as a tool for change and transformation.

For many of those years I concentrated on web content production, research, writing and editing, plus analysis and strategies, with some photography thrown in for fun.

While everyone is taught basic literacy skills in school, good writing is accomplished by continual practice and critical reading. My 19 years as an independent bookseller gave me an unprecedented opportunity to read widely and deeply and to acquire a critical sense for style and expression.

 Some Background

I started reading at an early age, visiting the library with my dad before I started school. From picture books I soon graduated to Dr Seuss and I read my way through everything in the bookmobile that stopped regularly in front of my elementary school. Our house had no TV before I was 10.

I started my creative career in university radio and also worked part-time in the university’s CCTV studios.

After graduation and a year of travel through 20 odd countries, I trained as an assistant film and sound editor in the TV and feature film industry in Toronto. It was an experience of story, sound and sight. Moving to the production floor, I progressed from p.a to 3rd then 2nd assistant director. That was an education in project management.

I grabbed a chance to research and write when invited to join the original production team of CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program, Sunday Morning, working under the legendary producer, Mark Starowicz (creator of As It Happens and tv’s The Journal). In my spare time I wrote articles for Maclean’s and other magazines.

Then twice bitten, first by love and then entrepreneurship I married and moved to a small town and opened a bookstore in an historic building on Main Street.

Post marriage and after selling the store I took some time off, studied multimedia at college and worked on a masters degree in architecture: For me a better response to midlife than a red convertible or a Harley-Davidson.

If you read this far you will realize two themes continue to inform my life, stories in various media forms and culture. Recently I added performance storytelling and a more formal study of stories to my extensive media knowledge and toolkit.

Writing and storytelling are about working with the nine senses (count ‘em*) to create the myths and tales we use and need to understand our world.

Call or email. 

Let me know what you’re interested in, what your problems and challenges are. Let’s work together to build new stories for your life or business.

My comprehensive experience gives me a big picture view of how the pieces might fit together.  I say ‘might’ because creation is about doing and collaborating to your satisfaction.

  • BA in history and art history from Carleton University, Ottawa
  • Certificate in Multimedia  Studies at Algonquin College, Ottawa
  • Course work toward a MArch at Carleton University, Ottawa
  • Numerous workshops with many professional organizations

And yes, I am an eighth generation Canadian of Scottish ancestry. The name is real; I’m proud of it and I don’t care if you call all my ancestors Highland cattle thieves. The simple black and red tartan is associated with Rob Roy.

*See, hear, taste, touch, smell, balance, pain, temperature, kinesthetic, and maybe a 10th – intuition.  – The Elements by Sir Ken Robinson – , page 31-32.

For more information about me: LinkedIn