Dear Glacier Farm News hiring decision maker(s):

Please consider me in your search for an Alberta Reporter – News Hub and National Affairs. I believe I have the skillset you are looking.

After completing my degree, while also serving as a writer/production editor for the Students’ Union, Gateway, I joined The University of Calgary as a Communications Officer II. In that position, I worked with university administrators to develop and implement strategic communications plans for students, staff, faculty and the public. As co-editor of the bi-weekly, Gazette, I researched and wrote copy covering virtually all Faculties and often presented technical information to a more general audience. My article, New ways to slice the mapping pie (and its accompanying commissioned illustration) and my profile of new staff member, Beatrice Medicine, are two examples. I also supplied photography, illustration and design skills to further market the university to its various communities.

After almost five years with the U of C, I accepted a position as a Journalism Instructor at Grant MacEwan Community College, where I developed curricula and taught and assessed students in courses in newswriting, graphic design, photojournalism and mass media.

I have considerable trade-magazine and freelance writing experience. Moving to Vancouver, I joined Southam Business Communications as Western Editor for Canadian Forest Industries Magazine, providing copy on all aspects of the business including harvesting, safety and milling. Settling in Nanaimo I freelanced as a weekly reporter for The Nanaimo Business Examiner providing business related stories, like the development of a submersible camera. I was also a daily reporter for The Nanaimo Free Press..

As Marketing Manager Working for T-MAR Industries, I launched the company’s newsletter, The T-MAR Times and used my creative abilities with photography, video and design to produce advertising, brochures, customer surveys and promotional videos, like the company’s participation in a “live forestry” exhibition.

A downturn in the forest industry led to 10 years overseas teaching art and later, mathematics, in Libya, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Norway, the UAE and Japan. Highlights of this period include a number of video productions that include: a student illustrated video of my children’s story, The Apple of Albert’s Eye, in Saudi Arabia; a short film, God is Love, made with my students in Al Ain, UAE; the video introduction to a high school production of The Rocky Monster Show, in Jeddah; my video application for the position of Traveling Ambassador for Air Transat, in Dubai; and a documentary, Truck Logging in Africa, in Cameroon.

Returning to Canada in 2012, I launched my WordPress website to highlight my creative abilities in writing, photography, art, graphic design, video and music production. I use my website and blog to promote my belief in a more positive world. I have a working knowledge of WordPress, MS Office, Illustrator and Photoshop and have used a number of video editing programs.

In 2013, I moved to Prince George, B.C., where I served as a Community Support Worker, Residential Care Worker, Licensed Property Manager and, my personal favorite, a brief stint bundling seedlings on an assembly line for tree planters at Canfor’s J.D. Little Forestry Centre. In my position as a Community Support Worker, I provided clients with informal counseling and support; medication administration, and recreation and development activities. Prince George, like many other parts of Canada, has issues with homelessness, poverty and drug use, which prompted me, in part, to create a music video to my song, Brand New Song, that comments on the issue.

In 2021, I returned to Edmonton, my birth city, and spent my first winter there as a custodian in shelters for the homeless. I subsequently became a janitor and now a cook for Horizon North in a camp for Cenovus energy at their site near Fort MacMurray.

I have a broad range of experience and creative energy that I apply to observing, questioning and commenting on the world around me in a variety of media. You could call it reporting. You call for a commitment to fairness, accuracy and balance in content and I believe I share those values, which is why I responded to Aaron James’ book, Assholes* *A Theory, and the documentary of the same name by Canadian filmmaker, John Walker, both of which I found anything but balanced and accurate. I find it shocking that James, a Harvard educated philosophy professor, would call for “reeducation camps” and sanction physical violence as a means of solving his “problem.” In my most recent commentary, Rethinking War, I examine Political Science Professor Shaun Narine’s call for US allies to withdraw their support for and complicity in US military aggression.

Both of these articles are lengthy. The common thread that binds them together is my belief in a positive, peaceful and functional world that addresses the challenges we all face as equal stewards of the earth and each other. And wholesome food, produced as efficiently as possible, is vital to that belief. Hence my interest in joining you as your Alberta Reporter.

I’m assuming that “reading between the lines” you have realized that I’m no “spring chicken.” Applying for this position brings me full circle and back to my earliest days of reporting for Alberta’s rural Star newspapers while attending university. It would be my pleasure to join you in this role.