I grew up in Vancouver, left home at fifteen and wandered around the US and Canada for the next decade working as a window washer, TV extra, factory drone, landscaper, library shelver and part-time musician.  Despite such a chequered resume, an editor friend gave me a job as a reporter on a weekly newspaper in Kelowna and I became a journalist.  I drifted to PEI and managed to get in the front door of the CBC.

For the next thirty years I hosted and produced shows in Charlottetown, Regina and Vancouver, including the current affairs show The Early Edition and the long-running jazz program Hot Air.  I guest-hosted national programs including Disc Drive, After Hours and Sounds Like Canada.   Over the years I have written for several newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The Charlottetown Guardian and The National Post.  And I co-hosted a CTV series about container gardening called The Concrete Jungle, which is still in syndication somewhere.

My wife Laurie Dickson and I wrote The Stanley Park Companion  (Bluefield 2003), a natural and social history of Vancouver’s thousand-acre back yard.   In 2018 we spent a year in Saskatchewan writing a travel blog called Road Apples – Adventures Off The Grid In Canada’s Squarest Province (https://saskwatchers2019.blogspot.com/2018/09/whats-road-apple.html) 

After more than 30 years in my hometown of Vancouver we now live in Laurie’s home town of Moose Jaw.

Coming from BWL Publishing in 2025

The Paranormal Canadiana Collection

Saskatchewan

Hamish McKenzie stood welded to the spot as fifty million volts coursed through his body.  He was dead before he hit the ground.   Dealanch was never wrong.  Lightning stalks the first-born of three generations of the McKenzie clan from Scotland to Ottawa to Saskatchewan as each successive son looks over their shoulder knowing it was not a question of if, but when the paranormal would strike. 

Running from the inevitable – the McKenzie clan leaves Scotland for Canada,

but can they outrun lightning? 

Astraphobia stalks three generations trying to escape the first-born curse.