My story

I was born in Grimsby, in Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula, on March 7, 1951, where as a boy I spent summers picking fruit on local farms, and developing a love of cherries and peaches.

From a young age, I was inspired by the region’s colourful history and the Niagara Escarpment’s abundant natural beauty. Both would return to influence my life and writing. 

Growing up in Grimsby, I often entertained fellow students with my corny wise-cracks and gained notoriety as a smart-Alec among certain teachers of a less-tolerant nature. I also loved  to write and, one day, fellow students turned to me to compose a letter to the local newspaper when some issue I’ve long forgotten piqued their attention. I was thrilled and it would be a defining moment.

As a boy, I read voraciously: everything from books and magazines to newspapers, which I would spread out on the living room floor and hinder normal familial passage. 

When I was presented with a junior printing set one Christmas, I started putting out my own news sheet. A school visit to the Hamilton Spectator sealed my fate. I was enthralled with the smell of ink and the deep rumble of the presses that shook the building. I was hooked.

At the dinner table, politics was as normal a topic of conversation as the day’s events. Knowing their son’s love of writing, my parents were hardly surprised when those often heated debates led me to consider a career in newspapers, although they had been hoping for something more stable. Teaching, perhaps.

I headed to university in Ottawa, to Carleton University, where I entered  the journalism program and specialized in Canadian history and politics. 

My arrival in the nation’s capital in September 1970 came weeks before the FLQ crisis, during which time I was witness up close to the historic national emergency that left a scar on my country’s psyche.

After summer internships at the St. Catharines Standard and Hamilton Spectator, I graduated from Carleton and was hired by the London Free Press for its Sarnia bureau. My experiences there awakened me to the realization that the real-life stories I covered could be fodder, and inspiration for future writing. 

While in Sarnia, I was introduced to a piece of Canadiana that had previously escaped my notice: that the modern-day oil industry began in Ontario’s Lambton County.  I met some of the grease-smeared men who still toiled in the pioneer oil fields, not for a huge profit, but for their determination to help preserve the region’s unique story. I was inspired by their passion.

Two decades later, I would return to that subject to write Hard Oiler! The Story of Early Canadians’ Quest For Oil At Home and Abroad. The book is recognized as the seminal work, written in an easily understood style, on Ontario’s oil history and when it sold out, I updated and republished a new edition. I also wrote four more books about early oil. 

While I worked for the Free Press, I was assigned to cover politics in its Toronto and Ottawa bureaus. During that time, I reported on stories that ranged from the patriation of the Canadian constitution, to the transition from Pierre Trudeau to Brian Mulroney. 

After winning a Massey Southam Fellowship to study economics, history and free trade at the University of Toronto, I returned to London and served as the Free Press’s assignment and London & Region editor before being appointed editorial page editor. 

I left the Free Press in 1997, which is when  I wrote my first book, Hard Oiler! 

In 1998, I was hired as an editor by the Ottawa Citizen, eventually serving in the Canada, world and city departments.

In 2007, I left the Citizen to begin a new career as a freelance writer and editor. My articles appeared in newspapers, magazines and journals across Canada and the United States. 

It was during this time that I turned my attention back to book writing, and a career that allowed me to utilize my journalist’s experiences in a whole new way. 

Commissioned to produce biographies, business and family stories, I used this as a stepping stone back to further explore my fascination with Canada’s oil history. 

I also revisited a mysterious figure who had come to my attention during my early oil research in the 1990s, William Henry McGarvey. Details of McGarvey’s life had eluded me when I wrote Hard Oiler! and now I was determined to track him down. The trail led me to Poland, Austria, Russia and the UK.

Finally, after a series of thrilling discoveries, I was able to piece together McGarvey’s story. Mosaic Press publisher Howard Aster quickly recognized this was a story well worth sharing with the world, and thus was born Crude Genius: The Making of An International Oil Baron.

I had been experimenting with character development in Crude Genius and decided to resurrect an old project to put my skills to a new use, in a work of historical fiction. 

Calling upon the stories shared by older members of my own family for inspiration, I took the germ of a plot and turned it into what would become my first novel. It is a story inspired by, but not based upon my own family’s experiences. Stay tuned!

From a young age, I loved the thrill of travel, a pastime I have shared with friends, and then my wife, Linda Mondoux. Besides exploring Canada and the United States from end to end - Yukon is my favourite spot - I have trekked across Europe, the Caribbean, Madeira, Mexico and South America, and stood in awe of the towering glaciers and ice-cloaked mountains of Antarctica. Along the way, I developed an abiding respect for penguins. 

Every new place I have lived has inspired me to research and learn something new. When I arrived in Windsor, Ontario, I found that no book had ever been written that delved into the city’s rich labour history. And so I decided to write it. That will be my next non-fiction project, on which I am currently working with Biblioasis Press.