User:Cheworks/Ted Kouretas

EARLY YEARS
Ted (Theodoros) Kouretas was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on September 20, 1968. His parents immigrated to Canada in 1967. From the ages of 2 to 7, Ted lived with both pairs of grandparents in the village of Methoni, Messinia, in the southern Peloponnese and attended school there until the end of grade 1. Ted returned to Montreal not knowing a word of English yet doing well in school and not failing a grade. Ted grew up in the Park Extension area of Montreal, then the centre of the city's Greek immigrant population. He attended Sinclair Laird Elementary Schoool and William Hingston High School, both in Park Extension. Ted's family was working class, but his upbringing was healthy for him and his brother, Frank (Fotios), who is 4 years younger than him. At the age of 13, Ted was diagnosed with epilepsy after suffering 2 grand mal seizures. Struggling with this for over a year, he was finally given the right medication to combat his malady, which is still under control.

20 to 30
Ted excelled in the arts and opted to get a social science degree in CEGEP(this is like preparatory school for university that exists exclusively in Quebec). Ted then went to Concordia University in Montreal and got a degree in English Literature and Sociology. Ted then decided to go to his parents' hometown for a sabbatical in the summer of 1994. This is where he got his first inspiration to write short stories and poetry. He wrote late at night on the veranda overlooking the sea a kilometre away. Things got difficult moneywise, and Ted decided to move to San Jose, California, where his mother was living with her new husband. He stayed there till the beginning of 1995, unsuccessful in getting a green card. He moved back to Montreal in March of 1995. Ted began teaching English as a second language to people working in corporations. He continued his work in poetry, citing that short stories just took too long and had too many formatting rules to follow. It was at this point when his friend, Rosa Ragusa, introduced his to William Carlos Williams and Charles Bukowski. Ted put together the dry style of Bukowski and the angst of Morrissey and began to enjoy writing and took it to another level. Ted travelled to Amsterdam and Prague and noticed how much freer those societies were. He had made friends there from his stay in Greece and visited them in the mid- to late-1990's. Ted realised that to be true to himself, he needed to be true to his calling---which was in relating his feelings to others through different media.

To The Present
From 1998 to the present, Ted has delved into different fields of interest. He dated Laval artist Marie Lauzon and learned how to paint. He finished his first painting in 2005 which he simply titled "NO PICASSO". In 2000, Ted started writing rap lyrics under the pseudonym Grand Master T, which he still uses. Ted was a candidate for the Green party of Canada in the federal elections of 2004 in the Pierrefonds-Dollard riding and 2006 in the riding of Laval-Sur-Le-Lac and will be representing the Bourassa riding in the next Canadian federal election.