Sharing a May 29th birthday with my literary hero G.K. Chesterton (though my blessed event occurred 78 years later) I first began to evince signs of a literary disposition in grade three with a bizarre short story told from the perspective of a plummeting raindrop who chooses to expend his brief life in a socially useful way by making sure that he lands on top of – and by gum, he douses! – a discarded match burning dangerously close to a pile of paper.

Then my gift, such as it was, went dormant for about a decade, reappearing only at erratic intervals until my 16th year when I quit school and commenced keeping weird hours and writing appallingly pretentious poetry by candlelight that I actually thought was pretty good. Re-enrolling in high school for a couple more years but not, alas, enough to earn a diploma, I then got the English teacher I’d been waiting for all my life, and my course was set for life as a vendor of words.

I started out with fiction, always supplementing it with other ‘day’ jobs, and even had my first novel published (The Goof), that netted me one great whacking royalty cheque that pretty well paid off one month’s utility bill. When my wife and I started to get into serious baby production, I ventured into the wonderful world of freelance journalism (I heard there was steadier money to be earned there, and most of the time there is) where I’ve floundered about ever since.

On the fictional/creative side of the ledger, I’ve now had two novels (The Goof and Not It) and one book of short stories (Counting Backwards from a Hundred) published as well as three essay collections (The Invisible Lone Ranger Suit, Towards a Forest City Mythology, and In Good Faith). Other published tomes include a history of theatre in London (Curtain Rising) and a book about the recent group art exhibition in London celebrating the Thames (The River Project).

I’ve also cranked out a half dozen plays that have all been produced, The Judgement of Slippery Jack, Suffering Fools, The Anniversary, Slippery or You Can’t Get There From Here, The Dark Ages and Nature Abhors a Vacuum. Most of these were pretty local deals, though Suffering Fools has been produced across Canada and even in Texas and my adaptation of the play for CBC Radio won that year’s Gold Medal for Best Script at the New York International Radio Festival.

I’ve held down column writing gigs with a variety of newspapers and magazines, most of them hopelessly local, and have served as editor twice before joining up with The Voice of London – for Scene magazine during what I consider its glory years when it was a fine fat weekly that featured the most extensive arts coverage in town, and for Challenge magazine, a national journal of Catholic news and opinion where I got to work shoulder to shoulder with the late Larry Henderson, Canada’s grand old man of television journalism.

The welcome opportunity to work with Jim on The Voice of London has been a real departure for me journalistically – covering city politics (not my usual bailiwick) and appearing in pixels instead of print. It was a little daunting at first to be operating so far out of my comfort zone but it was probably time for a good shattering change and I do believe I’m finding a new set of feet to stand on. I’m also coming to a far deeper appreciation than ever before of the impact that politics has on our lives – the importance of the work and that it be done well, and the importance of holding it up to exacting and constructive scrutiny.