Hi there. Welcome to my website. To take a short-cut directly to information about one of my books, my research and credentials, examples of my commercial illustrations, my drawings, and my services, head to the menu at the top of the page now, where you will also find a career overview. Otherwise, keep reading. And visit my Blog for book excerpts, archived magazine articles, and original posts.
What I do
I am the author or co-author of about twenty works of non-fiction (and counting), and have published innumerable magazine articles. I’ve written widely on history, business, science and technology, the environment, and sport. While I have published recent works with academic presses, my writing is pitched at the discerning general reader, and I pride myself in explaining complex things for general audiences. You can find entries I have written for Henry Hudson, John Cabot, Nortel, and Tim Hortons at the Canadian Enclopedia, a resource aimed at school-age readers. Other clients include Cottage Life, ON Nature, Canada’s History, and UC Observer. I provide editorial services to publishers and individuals. Those services include ghost writing, for projects that have included a major global brand, a leading figure in Canadian business, one of the world’s top consulting companies, and a leading global cybersecurity firm. I also work as an illustrator and a graphic designer. In my spare time, I’m a landscape artist. I also run the website Wild Great Lakes, which addresses news and issues for cruising boaters, kayakers, campers, cottagers, hikers, anglers, and whoever else might be interested.
Credentials
My first pass through higher ed was at McMaster University, where I studied painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and art history. I hold a PhD in history (York University, 2015), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo. While I was a staff writer with the Financial Post in the late 1980s, I completed my Canadian Securities Course.
Awards
I won Canada’s National Business Book Award in 2003 for The Bubble and the Bear (Doubleday Canada, 2002), which dissected the tech-stock bubble through the rise and fall of Nortel. I was a finalist for the award in 2013 for Double Double (Harper Collins Canada, 2012), my assessment of the burgeoning Tim Hortons restaurant phenomenon. (In 1994 I published a biography of Tim Horton, Against the Odds, with Penguin Canada.)
In 2007, I published God’s Mercies (Doubleday Canada), which revealed the traumatic intersection of the careers of Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain. It was a finalist for both the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize (2007) and the Governor-General’s Literary Award (2008).
My doctoral dissertation, “Stone of Power,” was awarded a Dissertation Prize by York University. In 2016, I received the Distinguished Dissertation Award for Humanities, Social Sciences and Fine Arts from the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies. A revised version of my dissertation The Place of Stone, was published in 2017 by the University of North Carolina Press. In 2018 I published with McGill-Queen’s University Press Beardmore: The Viking Hoax that Rewrote History. It was a finalist for the 2018 Wilson Book Prize, awarded by the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University to the book that “offers the best exploration of Canadian history that, in the view of the Wilson Institute, succeeds in making Canadian historical scholarship accessible to a wide and transnational audience.”
What I’m up to
In addition to my usual freelance writing, landscape art, and editorial services, I am working on a new book for McGill-Queen’s University Press, Jackson’s Wars, which explores the foundational years of artist A.Y. Jackson’s career, his experiences as a soldier and war artist in the First World War, and his co-founding of the Group of Seven.
How do you find my books?
The ones in print can be ordered from any bookstore, if they’re not in stock there. See otherwise the links for online ordering on the individual book pages in my Menu. You can also see what’s available at Amazon Author Central
How do you reach me?
Email me here
Am I on Twitter?
My account is currently dormant, but you can always check in to see if I’m active again. “at” DWHauthor
