Biography

Colin Frizzell was born in Belleville, Ontario in 1971, the youngest child of Arthur (Art) and Annie Margaret (Peggy) Frizzell. He was raised on the shores of Lake Ontario in the tightly knit farming community of Cressy, which lies on the eastern most point of Prince Edward County (The County). Colin grew up with his sister (Trish) and brother (Mike) in the same house his father was born and raised in. Art was a school bus driver and gentleman farmer and Peggy, a schoolteacher. For his first four years Colin's main caregiver was his Northern Irish grandmother Elizabeth (Lily). Colin was the only child in the area to speak with a Belfast accent.

Giving into peer pressure, Colin lost his accent shortly after starting elementary school at North Marysburgh Centennial Central School. Colin wasn't a fan of the confines of formal education and looked forward to the summers when his mother's Irish/American cousins would come up bearing gifts and tastes from a far off land called Milwaukee. The time with the cousins was always full of laughter, banter and storytelling, which Art was a master at.

Colin's love for storytelling followed him to high school at Prince Edward Collegiate Institute (P.E.C.I.). There he took drama and media Arts, writing and performing at every opportunity. He formed a Media Arts group, got involved behind the scenes with school productions and other local groups which used the high school's auditorium—it was the town's only available stage. When the town started to bring in theatre groups, Colin quickly got involved. The sets, the actors, the plays themselves, and seeing how it all came together captured his imagination, but it seemed out of reach.

After high school Colin worked for a year with British and German tradesmen as a carpenter's assistant before attending Radio Broadcasting at Loyalist College of Arts & Technology. At Loyalist, while working in the library to help with expenses, he became the class representative to the Dean in his first year and Program Director of the in-house college station in his second. He also had a poem "Dear God" published in the local alternative Magazine Scream. After graduation he continued his media studies taking another year at Loyalist to study television before moving to Toronto to study film at Humber College.

While at Humber he got a job at Roy Thomson Hall, which gave him the opportunity to further expand his world by watching the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and many legendary performers such as Al Green, Tom Jones, Aretha Franklin and the list goes on. For a farm boy who loved music, he could never have imagined actually getting paid to watch concerts. Colin soon became restless and after a year and a half he quit at Humber and used the last bit of his student loan for a backpack, an Irish passport and a ticket to Dublin.

Dublin fired Colin's spirit of adventure and instead of looking for a job, as planned, he hitchhiked to London. Once there he bought a bus pass for Europe and spent the next thirty days trying to see as many European cities as he could, often taking overnight buses so that he could save on accommodations and not waste any time. When the money ran out, Colin met up with his cousins in the North of Ireland where he was shown what true Irish hospitality was. They looked after him for three weeks until he found a job waiting tables at Roscoff, a high-end restaurant in Belfast.

In Belfast Colin lived off the Ormeau Road with an Irishwoman, a German and an Austrian. He continuously called the Northern Irish Film Council until he finally got a job as a director's assistant trainee and driver on the film Divorcing Jack - directed by David Caffrey and starring David Thewlis and Rachel Griffiths.

After that he started work on his first screenplay and moved to the south where he got two out of the three necessary signatures to become part of the Irish film union when all his earthly possessions were stolen from his room at a Dublin Youth Hostel.

Forced to take a job as a bartender in the Irish countryside, since it provided room, board and a uniform, Colin's focus shifted to rebuilding funds and writing. Then, on a weekend trip to Galway, he fell in love with the city and its people, quit his job and moved there. Colin remained in Galway (sometimes referred to as the city that kills ambition) for more than eight months, immersing himself in local culture and exchanging stories with house and work mates who all had the gift of the gab.

After nearly two years away, Colin decided it was time to return to Canada. Not being able to find any work that suited him in Prince Edward County he returned to Toronto and back to Roy Thomson Hall.

Unfortunately Colin's father, the master storyteller who had been one of his main inspirations was taken by prostate cancer in 2003, but his spirit is alive and well in every laugh made, glass raised, and anecdote told.

Colin's close with his family though they're scattered. His mum remains in the community and house Colin grew up in, Mike lives with his wife (Charlette) and the three children (Ryan, Mitchell and Allison) in Ottawa and Trish resides in England.

Colin currently lives in 'The County'. He has written several short stories, poems, and three feature length screenplays the first of which has been optioned and the company is looking for financial backing. He's received a grant from the Toronto Arts Council for a book he's working on, and funding from the Self Employment Benefits program to allow him to write full-time.