For The Walrus, I reviewed John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: the Making of a Beast.
Hold My Cider →
For The Walrus, I profiled Revel Cider, a Canadian cidery that is pushing back against dominant trends in cidermaking—that it’s just sweet, just a summer drink, just made from apples—pushing well beyond Strongbow and Growers to reimagine, redefine, and at times reinvent cider itself.
The Women’s National Team Taught Canada How to Be a Soccer Country →
For The Walrus, I wrote about Canada’s men’s soccer team returning to the World Cup for the first time in thirty-six years, iconic moments in sports, and how the national women’s team laid the foundation for Canada as a soccer-loving nation.
The Intimate Relationship of Telling Someone Else's Story →
For Catapult, I wrote about how nonfiction writers can get so consumed by investigating that we lose track of the story and how narrating the audiobook for Lost in the Valley of Death brought me back to the real person at the heart of the book.
Strokes of Genius: The Red Cross’s Swimming Badges Leave a Legacy of Certified Courage →
For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about the Canadian Red Cross’s Water Safety Programme (ending this year) and how it was not just education, but certification. What we earned were not badges of honour, but badges of something much more powerful to a young kid: confidence.
‘Travelers Who Were Lost Forever’: Why Tourists Experience ‘India Syndrome’ →
I wrote about how some travelers who spend longer periods of time in India exhibit a curious condition: a spectrum of behavioral and psychological changes that can be all-consuming.
The Guardian
The Search for the "Authentic" is a Search Without End →
For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about the flawed search for the “authentic” in travel.
The Wheel of Time: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Adaptations of Our Favourite Books →
For The Walrus, I wrote about the fantasy book series The Wheel of Time, imagination, and the impossible challenge of adaptation. As young readers of the series, the make-believe world that existed in black ink on white pages was ours, and ours alone, to colour in. As Amazon launches its TV adaptation, how does it feel when someone else colours in that world for us?
How to Teach Kids about Impending Doom →
For The Walrus, I profiled award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Jon Klassen about his latest book, “The Rock from the Sky,” and trusting four-year-olds with difficult realities.
The Elders Act →
For the Globe and Mail, I co-wrote an op-ed with John Vaillant, author of The Golden Spruce, about the current state of old-growth forest protection in British Columbia.
For millennia, the abundance and diversity of coastal and inland forests have fed, clothed, housed and nurtured us. What remains of these elder forests represents an irreplaceable source of historical knowledge and biological complexity that cannot be measured in dollars, jobs or hectares.
The Fall of Mountain Equipment Co-op →
For The Walrus, I wrote about what the sale of Mountain Equipment Coop to a US company means for longtime members.
First it lost the mountain from its brand. Now it has lost the co-op from its spirit. All that’s left is equipment.
Port Renfrew's Beach Camp Coffee Co. →
For Craft MTN magazine, I profiled Beach Camp Coffee Co, an organic coffee roaster in Port Renfrew, British Columbia.
Maybe it was the mist rolling off the Pacific Ocean, or the Douglas-fir-scented air, or maybe it was the flames licking the sides of the cast iron pan in which a handful of green coffee beans were toasting—but the aroma was exciting.
The Last Great Tree: a majestic relic of Canada's vanishing rainforest →
Spared by the loggers’ chainsaws a Douglas fir perhaps 1,000 years old stands in splendid isolation on Vancouver Island. An excerpt from “Big Lonely Doug: the story of one of Canada’s last great trees.”
Lost in the Valley of Death →
For Outside magazine, I wrote a feature about Justin Alexander Shetler, who, in 2016, went searching for higher meaning and vanished in a remote valley in the Indian Himalayas—a valley where over two dozen other foreign backpackers have mysteriously disappeared. A story about the dark and dangerous road to enlightenment.
Outside
All My Love →
For The Walrus, I wrote about my grandparents’ love story during the Second World War. Love letters were a crucial lifeline between soldiers and home, and for four years, their relationship was expressed through the hundreds of letters they sent back and forth across continents and oceans. She kept every single one he wrote to her; he kept only one.
Man With a Plant →
For The Walrus, I profiled Nigel Saunders, a Canadian bonsai artists who creates tutorials and updates for his dozens of miniature trees on YouTube. When my own amateur attempts at growing bonsai weren’t working, I packed my tree onto the train and went to consult Saunders thee bonsai YouTube star.
Big Lonely Doug should become Canada’s next provincial park →
For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about why Big Lonely Doug, and the surrounding forest and clearcut, should become Canada’s next provincial park. What if the most compelling place to experience British Columbia’s forests wasn’t simply an intact grove of towering trees? The province’s next flagship protected area could instead provide it all—with a single, 20-storey tall tree at its heart.
Out of the Shadow of a Mountain →
For The Walrus, I wrote about a trip my father and I took to the Indian Himalayas to better understand his history. I left understanding my future.
The Stories We Tell About Our Fathers →
For The Walrus, I reviewed Bill Gaston’s new memoir, Just Let Me Look At You, which examines his dad’s life—and our fears that we all become our parents.
Expedition ’67 →
In the year of Canada's centennial, Yukon hosted the country’s best mountaineers—who set out to conquer 13 of the territory’s unclimbed peaks. Fifty years later, a new documentary celebrates their adventure.