John was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and raised in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada and the New England States.  He has degrees in Philosophy from McGill University, the University of Toronto, the University of Exeter, and Cambridge University, where he earned his Ph.D. in Aesthetics under the supervision of Renford Bambrough.  He has published in the learned journals, including the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Law and Literature, and Philosophy and Literature.  For the past twenty-five years, he has taught in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, where he lives with his wife, two sons, and their handsome black lab, Abner.