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. My work has been published in all of Canada’s national newspapers, plus others including The Guardian, The Walrus, The Narwhal and CBC.

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

Salt Spring Island’s duelling crises — Capital Daily
The frontline of conservation: how Indigenous guardians are reinforcing sovereignty and science on their lands — The Narwhal
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.

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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.

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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.