About

I’ve always been fascinated by the past. 

I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, where my dad played professional hockey for a time and my family was nuts about the game. I failed to inherit the hockey gene though, so while my parents and big brother were downstairs in the rumpus room, glued to Hockey Night in Canada, I was curled up on the living-room couch, devouring historical novels.

I majored in history as an undergraduate at the University of Alberta, and did a master’s degree in English literature at the University of British Columbia. My thesis was on the novels of the Victorian writer, Thomas Hardy. In Edmonton, I worked as an editor at a feminist magazine and as a researcher at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Covering the excavation at El Castillo de Huarmey, Peru.  Photo courtesy of Robert Clark.

I began writing professionally when I moved to British Columbia in 1980, and since then I’ve traveled extensively on reporting trips–from the Sahara to Baffin Island and from the Atacama to Tonga. The best flight I ever took was in the backseat of an F-18 fighter jet, where I flew upside down 200 feet over the boreal forest in northern Alberta.

Today I live a 15-minute walk from the ocean in Victoria, and I love exploring the local trails and neighborhoods with my husband Geoff and our dog Gillie.