WRITING
Much of my writing concerns our food systems and their profound effect in shaping the land and water systems that sustain us. In addition to my freelance work as a feature writer and working as a senior editor at the Walrus and Toronto Life magazines, I have also held columns at the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Report on Business Magazine and Reader’s Digest. My work as both a writer and editor has won numerous National Magazine Awards in Canada and has also been recognized internationally. In 2014, I published my first short story, “Allow Me” in The New Quarterly. I’ve since written a novella and I am working on a novel. I am represented by Samantha Haywood at Transatlantic Agency.
Selected Stories: Water
The Noose Beneath the Waves A story about right whales, entanglement and the tragic death of Joe Howlett.
Winner of the 2019 Silver Award at the National Magazine Awards.
Balancing Faraway Life on Tristan da Cunha On a tiny island in the South Atlantic—the most remote, inhabited island in the world—the connection between conservation and survival is impossible to ignore.
Oil Rigs Are a Refuge in a Dying Sea Our reliance on fossil fuels is harming marine ecosystems—but the platforms we use to extract oil from the seabed are giving marine life new homes.
Republished by High Country News.
On the Threshold of Two Worlds At Under, the World’s Largest Underwater Restaurant, Dinner is Served with a Side of Marine Science
A Tuna’s Worth Bluefin tuna are a luxury that feeds the egos of many and the bellies of few. Inside a Canadian fishery that pursues them.
Picking up the Bones Moving burial grounds before the rising sea takes them away is painstaking and expensive. Why does it feel so important to do it?
Wasted Our global food system discards 46 million tonnes of fish each year. Why?
Republished by The Walrus.
How Many Countries Does It Take to Save a Fish? All of them—which makes conservation difficult when your neighbours keep poaching them.
Selected Stories: Land
Waiting for a Queen to Fly What does it mean to live within a colony? Inside the lives of Georgina Island’s honey bees.
Winner of the 2020 Gold Award at the National Magazine Awards.
Fight of the Bumblebee Honeybee colonies are collapsing around the world, putting food production in danger. We may need Canada’s indigenous pollinators to save the day.
Selected as one of the best environmental stories for the Walrus’s 20th anniversary.
Saving Saffron, Morocco’s Signature Spice For a few short weeks in the mountains south of Marrakech, it’s a race against time to harvest the world’s most sought-after spice.
A Snake in the Grass A deadly snake and a death in the family prompt me to confront my deepest fears.
Trouble in the Colonies Pesticide use and rising mortality rates among pollinators.
Farmers’ Revolt How a small group of farmers and wealthy weekenders in Creemore turned the Melancthon mega quarry protest into a cause célèbre
Wild Thing The making and remaking of Evergreen’s Brick Works
Selected Stories: Food and Science
The Woman Who Gave Us the Science of Normal Life Before Rachel Carson there was Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT’s first female student
Laying Waste Why do Canadians throw away 6 million tonnes of groceries each year? In 2015, I resolved to waste less food. It was harder than I thought.
Playing Chicken Antibiotics made modern farming possible. By abusing them, we risk everything.
Manufacturing Taste Is Kraft Dinner Canada’s true national dish?
For years, this was the most-read story at the Walrus. I still get invited onto podcasts to talk about it, 10 years later. In February 2023, I spoke to Jane Black at José Andrés Media’s Pressure Cooker podcast about the phenomenon. In 2018, I spoke to Nicola Twilley at Gastropod.
Why Do We Cook? A review of Michael Pollan’s book, Cooked
A Matter of Taste Mitchell Davis, vice-president of the James Beard Foundation, believes you can’t develop a national cuisine until you create a public conversation about food.
The Sweet Life: Maple Syrup Season in Quebec In Quebec, the flow of maple syrup anticipates the coming of spring.
Living Off the Land The first installment of a popular three-part series in the Globe and Mail about my experiment to feed my family exclusively from food produced within a 100-kilometre radius of Toronto.