Ever since I started writing about the automotive industry in 2015 from previously writing primarily about sports, I have been more fascinated with the people who own cars, drive them, manufacture them, sell them and service them than the cars themselves. Cars are products made of steel and equipped with various electronics that will someday be able to steer the vehicles without human hands. They may even be able to fly, similar to what Marty McFly and Doc did in Back To The Future, or the 60s TV show The Jetsons.
I have always been more intrigued with people and the human experience, and how I can connect them with stories. It’s in my DNA. Ever since I decided at a young age I wanted to write stories, it was because I wanted to apply that to people.
I have written hundreds of thousands of stories, and I’ve won numerous awards in more than 40 years as a journalist, including 21 with the Toronto Sun. In 2022, I won the Automotive Journalists Association of Canada Environmental Journalism Award. I received it in recognition of an article I wrote for the Toronto Star about David Suzuki driving from his home in British Columbia to Ontario in an electric car. To me, it was less about the car and more about the experience he had.
Winning the award meant a lot to me because it was only the second year I entered a story for the AJAC awards. I have that award next to the first Sovereign Award I won for writing about Canadian thoroughbred horse racing. It’s a bronze statue of a horse. I’ve won five Sovereigns, but you can only receive one bronze statue because they are expensive to produce.
I have also written more than 10 books, most of them biographies and autobiographies. I have written about or with: wrestler Bret Hart; former National Hockey League players-turned-broadcasters Eddie Olczyk and Nick Kypreos; football players Doug Flutie, Michael (Pinball) Clemons and Dan Giancola; jockey Sandy Hawley; curlers Sandra Schmirler and Colleen Jones; and Canadian military sniper Jody Mitic. The common denominator in all was crafting a life story into words. Three of my books became Canadian best-sellers and one, The Queen of Curling, about Sandra, was optioned for a movie. Hopefully some day it will be produced into a movie. Curling is a uniquely Canadian sport and Sandra was one of the best, a three-time Canadian and world champion and an Olympic gold medallist. Tragically she died in 2000 because of cancer. She left behind a husband and two young girls, one three and the other nine months. The book was less about sports and more of a tragic life story.
I have some book projects I am currently writing that have an automotive connection. I will be revealing more about them in the coming months.
As the Content Manager of The Car Magazine, I will do my best to produce stories, some of them with words, some with videos, some with photos and some with all or some these. Whatever multi-media form they appear, it will always be about people and the stories connecting them to cars.