journalism

About 1,000 magazine and newspaper articles have appeared under my byline over the years. Many are quite forgettable. A few are pretty good, though, and several have won prizes, including a National Magazine Gold Award and four Western Magazine Awards. I’ve created PDF files of some of these stories and posted them to this page. I plan to add other articles in the future, and enhance a few existing stories with photographs.

My articles have appeared in Equinox, Discovery, Endless Vacation, Explore, Western Living, Westworld, WEST, TORONTO, Montreal, Vancouver, enRoute, British Columbia Magazine, Big Picture, Going Places, LookWest, Waters, Equity, Coast, Vista, Rail Traveller, Oregon Historical Quarterly, BC Studies, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Melbourne Age, New Zealand Herald, Vancouver Sun, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Hamilton Spectator, Halifax Chronicle Herald, Victoria Times Colonist, London Free Press, Toronto Sun and Georgia Straight.

For a list of recent publications, click here.

Selected articles:

Kermode

Great White Hope Rare glimpses of white Kermode bears are one of the treasures of the Great Bear Rainforest. If we’re careful, our fascination with them might just help preserve their environment.

Western Living, April 2007

Arctic

Under the Midnight Sun Ellesmere Island has been called the travel destination with “the highest misery-per-visitor ratio in the world,” but it also inspires tranquility and awe.

Westworld, June 2002

Coins

Victoria’s Secret Among the world’s rarest coins, specimens of BC’s short-lived currency fetch a mint at auction. Hence, this modest proposal.

Vancouver, September 1998

Flood

The Really Big One Fire? Quake? Hardly. Think water, lots of water. Enough to send 250,000 of us scrambling for higher ground.

Vancouver, May 1994 (Western Magazine Award winner)

Sri Lanka

Like Father, Like Son A personal journey of discovery (and re-discovery) to the troubled, tropical island of Sri Lanka.

Discovery, October 1994

ShianeBetween the Living and the Dead Sometimes all you can do is make the best of a bad situation. A view of love from the inside, and life from the outside.

Western Living, April 1993 (National and Western Magazine awards winner)

China

A Family Visit They were oceans apart—a family separated by time and place, wealth and history, yet united by hopes, dreams and a wedding photograph.

Discovery, September 1994

Seattle

Sib Cities Vancouver south? Every year Seattle gets a little bigger, a little brighter and a little closer. So much in common, so little alike.

Vancouver, June 1994

A few of my “Coastlines” columns, which ran in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight for years, are posted below; many of these are still archived on the Straight website (click here for a full list), though I have no idea how long these links will last.

A Meditation on Arachnids

Timeless Architecture : BC’s Sponge reefs

Staying at Cuba’s casa particulares

Dan Bouman’s pinhole photography

From Fort Simpson to Lax Kw’alaams

Doriston and its “mayor,” Gunnar Gjerdin