Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the mouth of Miss Lonelyhearts: “Don’t wait for someone to choose you! Choose who you want and go after them.”

Sure that’s insightful advice, but what gives this Winnipeg Sun columnist license to dish out advice? The answer to that question is more than just degrees and licenses, but life experience and attentive listening.

Speaking by phone from her Winnipeg home, Miss Lonelyhearts—a.k.a. Maureen Scurfield—said that she gets anywhere from 20 to 100 e-mails and letters a day.

“I answers all the letters I get, whether they are published in the paper or not,” she said.

Over the course of her 26 years on the job, she’s noticed three recurring problems: cheating, lack of desire, and people trying to make connections.

“The real f-word people need to incorporate into their relationship with their partner is fun, which leads to a sexual connection,” Scurfield said. “People have become so used to hanging out, it has created this insidious disease called boredom that creeps into our relationships over time and kills them.”

Scurfield believes in the importance of creating loving relationships not only with your partner, but with others as well.

“We need better supports in order to combat isolation, which has been an effect of our business lives becoming just as important as our personal lives. We need more people in our lives to turn to.”

Scurfield earned a degree in both English and psychology from the University of Manitoba before heading to Ottawa’s Carleton University for a degree in journalism. After graduation, she returned to Winnipeg and began writing general news for the Sun.

During her first year, she suggested to her editor that Winnipeg needed an agony aunt (the colloquial term for female advice columnists) and she’s been giving advice to readers all over the country ever since.

Scurfield is an outsider readers can go to anonymously for unbiased advice. She doesn’t claim to know all the answers though, and even suggests counseling is beneficial.

“If the people I write back to need something more than a quick answer, I tell them there are people they can talk to and whom I can refer them to,” Scurfield said, “because once you fix yourself you are better equipped to handle stressors.”

Published in Volume 63, Number 21 of The Uniter (February 26, 2009)