I’m a Canadian ex-pat located in Oakland, a frequent contributor to the LA Times, Smithsonian Magazine, the SF Chronicle, Via and the Guardian. My work — on travel, business, the arts, tech, food — has been nominated for 13 National Magazine Awards in Canada, winning two, and has won, stateside, a NATJA gold, an Eureka and — my thanks — a BATW best-of award.
I recently wrote up a relatively young wine region for the Wine Enthusiast — Prince Edward County on Lake Ontario’s often frigid north shore. The soil is limestone flecked, like Burgundy’s, but they have to bury the vines, one-by-one, each year. “What’s it like growing grapes in Siberia,” one of the area’s pioneers was asked early on. The culture of the area is both rustic and artsy — Vogue called it Canada’s Hudson Valley. One of the winemakers had been a runway model; another the most prolific editor of IMAX films, sick of Toronto’s rat-race. See https://www.winemag.com/2019/05/24/a-guide-to-canadas-newest-wine-region-prince-edward-county/
I also have the cover story of this month’s Sunset, on the draw of the lake, on waterside vacations past and present. The pretext for the piece was a trip to a lodge on Oregon’s Lake Suttle, in the Deschutes National Forest, and I recommended some of the other great Lake Lodges and Cabins of the West — at a range of price-points, levels of formality.) (It was something of an epic to get paid for it, the expenses and then the article fee, as the magazine’s owner figures out what he wants to do with this storied old property. The magazine doesn’t put its features online.)