About

Hi! I’m Jimmy Thomson, a Victoria, BC-based journalist and journalism teacher working in print, audio and video, and specializing in stories about how communities interact with their environments. I’m the editor in chief at Canada’s National Observer, and my work has been published nationally and internationally in publications like The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Walrus, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, The Narwhal and CBC.

Here are some of my favourite things I’ve written: 

The frontline of conservation — The Narwhal
An Ocean of Noise Pollution — The Globe and Mail
Grizzlies at the Table — BESIDE Magazine

A career highlight is a three-part investigation of the abuse of at-sea observers, which led to a change in national fisheries policy.

I can be reached at jameswsthomson [at] gmail [dot] com, or on twitter. My work is archived on my Authory page. 

Get in touch if you want to hire me or send me story tips or just because.

If you’d like to tell me climate change is a hoax, please write your message down, fold it up very small, and use it to prop up a wobbly table at a bar. Don’t forget to tip your server.

---

I have also been on the other side of the microphone, interviewed by the BBC, TalkRadio UK, German TV station RTK, Ryan Jespersen, and been a guest on several CBC Radio shows across Canada about various projects. My work has been cited by The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, the Washington Post, the BBC, Smithsonian Magazine, and others, and I have been the subject of articles and profiles by The Globe and Mail, the University of British Columbia Graduate Studies department, the Ryerson Review of Journalism, J-source, The Guardian, France24, the Vancouver Sun, and CBC’s The National.

I participated in Canada’s only Indigenous Reporting program and the Global Reporting Centre’s International Reporting Program, as well Canada C3, a coast-to-coast-to-coast expedition to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary and discuss the ongoing struggles of colonialism. I launched Mandalit, an experiment in ephemeral fiction publishing, and was the interim editor-in-chief at the humour magazine the Syrup Trap. I also make awesome pop-up greeting cards that celebrate the North.

---

Speaking

• Emcee/Host: National Magazine Awards, 2024
• Media training: Calgary Crisis Centre, 2023
• Media training: CPAWS BC, 2023
• Media training: Workers Solidarity Network, 2022
• Conference panelist: Countering Radicalization to Violence, 2024 (Toward a framework for harm-reduction journalism)
• Conference keynote: Humber College Data Driven 2021 (Working with Indigenous Communities on Data-Driven Storytelling)
• Conference panelist: Canadian Association of Journalists, 2023 (Freelancing for now)
• Conference panelist: Canadian Association of Journalists, 2022 (Canadian FOI is broken)
• Panel host: Rising Economy Week, Victoria, 2021
• Emcee/Host: Restorative Justice Victoria gala, 2019

Teaching

• Adjunct professor, UBC Graduate School of Journalism (Environmental Journalism, 2022)
• Sessional lecturer, UVic Department of Writing (Climate Journalism 2023, Creative Nonfiction 2021)
• Instructor, Camosun College (Digital Journalism 2022)
• Guest lecturer: UBC journalism and media law, UVic, Carleton University, The New School
• Graduate student adviser, UBC Graduate School of Journalism 2024
• Pulitzer Center post-grad fellow adviser, 2024
• Teaching assistant, science communication, UBC, 2013

Fun facts

• In February 2017 I had a neuroanatomy paper accepted by the Journal of Comparative Neurology
• I’ve had three films screened at the Dead North Film Festival, and eventually won four awards at that festival including Audience Choice.
• I contributed to The Canadaland Guide to Canada, a “nausea-inducing” #1 Globe and Mail/Amazon/Toronto Star bestselling book published in Spring 2017 by Simon and Schuster.
• My drone video work is included in the English/Bush Cree/South Slavey/Chipewyan film adaptation of the graphic novel Three Feathers.
• I was a recipient of the Erebus Medal for my (vanishingly small) part in the discovery of Sir John Franklin’s ship, the Erebus, in the High Arctic.
• I have gathered audio from a Tsleil-Waututh sweat lodge, photos of a Syrian prosthetics workshop, video of crab fishing on the Russian border, and all three from across the Canadian High Arctic.
• My work has been translated into Mandarin, German, French, Russian, Norwegian, Inuktitut, Chipewyan, Slavey, Gwich’in, and Italian (and, once, a nationally syndicated comic strip).
• I have reported from nine countries — including seven in the Arctic — on topics ranging from climate change and mining to war refugees to a budding Chinese environmental movement.
• I was once held ransom aboard a ship that would later make headlines for a completely different reason. I wrote about it here.