Who we are

Our website address is: https://wcdr.info.

The Writers’ Community of Durham Region (the “WCDR”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a not-for-profit network of writers from all genres and all levels of writing, from creative to technical to business and journalistic writing, who support each other through in-person meetings and a strong online community. Though we began as an organization centred around Durham Region, the municipality located in the eastern Greater Toronto Area, our membership extends across Canada, and to Canadian citizens living abroad. The WCDR welcomes all writing voices dedicated to the improvement of writing craft. 

An important part of the WCDR’s commitment to its members and visitors (“you” or “your”) is respect for your right to privacy.  This means keeping your information and details of your membership in the WCDR in strict confidence and to be open and transparent regarding our use, disclosure, and practices regarding your personal information, as we will detail in this Privacy Policy below (the “Policy”).

The WCDR’S Commitment to Privacy

This Policy applies to all of your “personally identifiable information” collected, used and disclosed by the WCDR.  “Personally identifiable information” is information about you that can identify you and is sometimes referred to as “personal data”.  For example, your street address, your credit card, and a picture of you are all personally identifiable information.

The objective of this Policy is to provide an overview of the WCDR’s organization and reflect the WCDR’s commitment to adhere to the legislative requirements of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and other applicable privacy legislation, concerning the handling of your personally identifiable information.

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), we will only process your personal data for specific purposes and you have certain rights under European law with respect to your personal information, including the right to request access to, correct, amend, delete or limit the use of your personal data.  If you wish to exercise these rights or have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us using the contact information below. 

Additionally, if you are located in the EEA, we note that we are processing your personal data in order to fulfill membership requirements of the WCDR, or otherwise to pursue our legitimate interests, unless we are required by law to obtain your consent for a particular processing operation.

How to Contact Us

To ensure the WCDR remains accountable for the manner in which we use, collect and disclose your personal information, everyone at the WCDR is responsible for maintaining and protecting the personally identifiable information to which they have access.  In addition, the WCDR has appointed a Privacy Officer, who will be accountable for ensuring its compliance with this Policy.

Questions pertaining to this Policy or the application of this Policy may be directed to:

Privacy Officer

Writers’ Community of Durham Region

Bayly Postal Station 

P.O. Box 14558

75 Bayly Street West

Ajax, Ontario 

L1S 7K7

Email:  PrivacyOfficer@wcdr.ca 

What Personal Information We Collect and Why We Collect It

The WCDR will only collect personal information needed for us to properly conduct our business and only collect it by fair and lawful means.

When you become a member of the WCDR, we will collect your personal information for the following purposes:

• to ensure security, reliability, and quality of our networks, services, and website; 
• to avoid any tampering, damage, and/or misuse of our networks, services, and website;
• to set up and establish your identification;
• comply with legal requirements;
• set you up as a paid member of the WCDR and review your membership status annually;
• protect you and the WCDR from error and fraud; and
• for limited marketing purposes.

The WCDR may also place a cookie on your device. A cookie is a small text file that our site may place on your computer as a tool to remember your preferences. If you have cookie notification turned on your device, you will be notified if the WCDR places a cookie on your device. The WCDR uses two (2) types of cookies:  session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies are created temporarily in your browser’s subfolder while you are visiting our website. Once you leave the site, the session cookie is deleted. Persistent cookies remain in your browser’s subfolder and are activated again once you visit our website. A persistent cookie remains in the browser’s subfolder for the duration period set within the cookie’s file. As an individual user you can set the cookie policy in your browsers and can delete cookie files manually at any time.

Finally, The WCDR may collect your voice and/or likeness when you attend a WCDR Monthly Network Meeting (“MNM”), a WCDR MasterClass, and/or other WCDR-hosted event (collectively, the “Events”), since these Events may be recorded and your attendance at one or more of these Events may be subject to audio and/or video recording.

Information provided by you

Most personal information collected by the WCDR is voluntarily supplied by you when you sign up, request, and/or utilize any of the services that we provide to our members and/or visitors and/or engage in communications with the WCDR. 

For these reasons, the WCDR collects different types of information from different types of interactions and/or people.  Please note that you may fall under more than one of the below types of people with whom The WCDR interacts.

From Visitors:

The following personal information may be collected and used by the WCDR to communicate with you, for security reasons, quality assurance, quality improvement, and to fulfil the WCDR’s legal and legitimate business requirements:

• Device type;
• Browser type;
• Operating system type;
• IP address;
• any other information that you may share with the WCDR through communications with the WCDR via email, telephone, and/or any letters; and
• audio and/or video recordings of you when you visit the WCDR’s Events.

From Members and their Authorized Representative(s):

The following personal information may be collected and used by the WCDR to communicate with you, to comply with the Income Tax Act, security reasons, quality assurance, quality improvement, fulfil the WCDR’s legal and legitimate business requirements, and for limited marketing purposes: 

• Name;
• Home address;
• Telephone number(s);
• Email address;
• Date of birth;
• Secure login information (password and user ID);
• Photograph for Membership profile;
• Details of your body of work, including published and unpublished works;
• audio and/or video recordings of you when you attend the WCDR’s Events; and
• any other information that you may share with the WCDR through communications with the WCDR via email, telephone, and/or any letters.

Personal Information about other individuals

If you provide us with information about other individuals (e.g. your next of kin), you confirm that you have informed the relevant individuals accordingly.

Public Information

The WCDR maintains a Membership Database and Member Pages on its website that contain information about individual members of the WCDR. This information may include personal information of the WCDR members, including legal and pen names (“noms de plume”), city of residence, email addresses, and a photographic image of the member.

Who Will Have Access to Your Personal Information

The WCDR is committed to a high standard of confidentiality and privacy.  The WCDR will only use and/or disclose your personal information for the reason(s) it was collected.  This means that the WCDR will share your personal information with you for the purpose of providing or improving our services, and may share specific personal information with third parties, including third parties that may be located outside of Canada, engaged to:

• assist us in providing or improving our services such as web hosting, maintenance providers, event booking platforms, etc.;
• process work usage data;
• provide cloud computing services; and
• payment of fees and other dues owed to the WCDR (e.g. PayPal). Please note that all credit card information is encrypted with banking level security protocols, and is processed, maintained and stored by PayPal. Privacy information for PayPal may be found here.

These third parties are prohibited from using your personal information for any purpose other than to provide the services noted above, and they are required to protect all personal information and comply with the general privacy principles described in this Policy.

Other than that we will not share any of your personal information without your consent, unless there is a requirement to do so by law.

Subject to certain exceptions, such as legal or contractual restrictions, you may withdraw your consent at any time to any further collection, use, or disclosure of your personal information by contacting the WCDR’s Privacy Officer. However, you should be aware that if you withdraw your consent the WCDR may be unable to provide services to you. For example, the WCDR requires certain information in order to register you as a member or for you to create an online account. If this relevant information is not provided, then we will not be able to administer your membership.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

The WCDR has a policy in place that governs the retention of your personal information. We will only retain your personal information for as long as it fulfills its intended purpose, or as legally required. Where we process membership personal data, we do this for as long as you are a member and for three (3) years after this unless there is a statutory or business requirement to retain this data.

How We Keep Your Personal Information Secure

While no data transmission over the internet or data storage system is guaranteed to be 100% secure, the WCDR has implemented security controls to protect against unauthorized use, access, alteration, duplication, destruction, disclosure, loss or theft of your personal information.

The WCDR maintains physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your personal information. Examples of safeguards include: restricted access to our information processing and storage areas, limited access to relevant information by authorized persons only, use of passwords, firewall technology, encryption of electronically transmitted information, and antivirus software.

The WCDR is also committed to working with you to protect the security of personal information during any transfer to the WCDR. Additionally, the WCDR has agreements and controls in place with third party service providers requiring that any information provided to the WCDR be transmitted and safeguarded with the industry standard technological security standards in mind.

The Privacy Officer will conduct periodic reviews of our various  practices to determine compliance with this Policy. The Privacy Officer will make all recommendations necessary to ensure compliance and determine whether any revisions to this Policy are required in light of new practices, processes, technologies or other changes.

How You Can Access and Control Your Personal Information

In the course of interacting with the WCDR, you are welcome to review or verify your personal information. In most cases the WCDR collects your personal information directly from you. If you discover inaccuracies in the WCDR’s data, please notify us to make the necessary changes. The WCDR may need specific information from you to enable us  to search for, and provide you with, the personal information we hold about you. Please note that access to your personal information is in accordance with the WCDR’s retention policy.

The WCDR will disclose to its members, Board of Directors, and visitors this Policy and make information available concerning the policies and practices that apply to the management of their personal information.

Any concerns regarding the WCDR’s compliance with this Policy can be reported in writing to the  WCDR Privacy Officer:

Privacy Officer

Writers’ Community of Durham Region

Bayly Postal Station 

P.O. Box 14558

75 Bayly Street West

Ajax, Ontario 

L1S 7K7

Email:  PrivacyOfficer@wcdr.ca

If you have concerns about how the WCDR handles your personal information, please note that you may always contact the independent oversight body:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada


30 Victoria Street

Gatineau, QC K1A 1H3

Toll Free: 1-800-282-1376

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our information practices.  We will alert you by posting a notice on our website when changes are made or if the change is material to you, we will e-mail you with information about the change.  We encourage you to periodically check for the latest information on our Policy.