Hyperborea

I joined Northern News Services in March of 1991 as editor of the weekly Inuvik Drum and Mackenzie Delta bureau chief for NNSL. At the time, it was a choice between two similar job offers: editing a community weekly in the ski resort of Whistler, B.C., or doing the same in Inuvik. It wasn't a hard choice. Then as now, the Drum's offices are the most northernly newsroom in North America. There's no downhill skiing, but the aurora borealis is a regular feature of the night sky.

My beat covered the northern Yukon, the Arctic coastal hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk and the Beaufort Sea communities of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region even further north.

During my term as Drum editor — and reporter, photographer, darkroom technician, and manager of a two-person newsroom — I also supplied Southam News with features on scientific and political developments in the region. The Whitehorse Star, Alaska magazine, the Canadian Press and Reuters also ran coverage under my byline.

My relationship with NNSL continued after my departure from Inuvik. During my four years as a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa, I covered the members of Parliament representing the North and filed the occasional story with the Yellowknife office.
Photo: University of Calgary

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