My love for journalism didn’t come at first sight.
In fact, it was another romance that inspired me to dip my toes into this unique profession. Fresh off a yearlong stint teaching English in South Korea, I had few meaningful job prospects waiting for me back in Canada. More importantly, I also had a girlfriend waiting for me I desperately wanted to impress. I decided it was time to head back to school, if only to appear productive to a partner about to enter grad school, and poring over the course list at my local community college, journalism seemed the least painful and most interesting of the bunch.
I quickly learned I possessed certain qualities that lent well to being a reporter: an abiding love of the written word; a bit of a rebellious streak; and a boundless, almost pathological curiosity.
Even still, I wouldn’t say I was head over heels just yet. Journalism was, at that point, merely a means to an end, the easiest way I could figure to get paid regularly for expressing myself. Did it pay well? No. Was the job easy? Also no. So, suffice to say, my initial relationship with journalism was less a marriage than an affair, and a somewhat reluctant one at that. She can be a cruel mistress, but the excitement, the stakes—hell, even the stress—kept me coming back for more.
Like the greatest romances, my feelings deepened over time, until one day I realized I was hopelessly enamoured. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment this epiphany hit, but safe to say it came inside the Pique’s high-ceilinged newsroom, probably after one of the frequent times my former colleague Alyssa Noel declared, quite accurately: “We have fun here.”
And, boy, we sure did.
It was only after leaving Pique for a spell in late 2023 that I came to understand how lucky I was to work a job that didn’t feel like one for so many years. Even on those long, endless deadline days, I very rarely caught myself looking at a clock. In today’s media landscape, when reporters are regularly asked to do more with less and are paid far below their worth, the journalists who stay in the industry (if they aren’t laid off first) are doing it for the love, not for career or financial security. For so many in this industry, it was simply the price you paid to be in the thick of the action, to have licence to call up anybody you want and ask nosy questions, to tell people’s stories, all in service of a greater public good.
That’s what made my decision to leave Pique and, at least for now, journalism, such a difficult one. If you’re a regular reader of these pages, you may remember I wrote a similar farewell column when I departed Pique the first time in December 2023, only to return this fall for what turned out to be a wonderful and familiar few months back in the saddle. Back then, as sad as I was to leave the publication I’d worked at for more than a decade, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time my byline appeared, and certainly wouldn’t be my last journalistic foray.
This farewell feels different, more permanent. Save for an upcoming cover feature on cannabis retail, this is very likely the last time my words will grace the pages of Pique. The reason for that is I’ve accepted a communications job at the Resort Municipality of Whistler and, well, it’s not exactly kosher for someone working for the local government—and even after—to also write for the media outlet tasked with covering that government. (And yes, I realize you had to read two-thirds of this column to get to the meat of the matter. That’s what we in the biz call burying the lede.)
I feel this strong urge to explain my decision, dear reader, because after spending so many years in conversation with you, I have this fear you’re gonna think I’m selling out by taking a job with the very entity I have spent years reporting on with a critical eye. And maybe I am.
As I wrestled with the decision, I must have called every single contact in my phone whose opinion I trust for their two cents (even in this, I was doing the work of a reporter, conducting my final round of interviews). Almost to a person, they told me the same thing: take the job, take the security, take the benefits, take the money.
After flirting for so long with a mistress I adored but who didn’t always love me back, picking a decidedly more boring partner, who offers me the kind of career stability and financial security I haven’t been good at providing myself, seemed like the adult thing to do. But you can be damn sure, in the meantime, the vivid memory of my mistress, despite all the ways she’s bad for me, will never live too far from my mind. And for that, I have Pique to thank, the weekly expression of my torrid love affair. Thank you for giving me a platform. Thank you for being my family. Thank you. Just thank you.
