Columnists

 
 
 
 
 
Hugh Adami

Hugh Adami is a former Citizen sports editor who began his career with the paper in 1977 as a copy boy after graduating from journalism at Carleton University. He has worked as a police, courts, municipal politics and general assignment reporter as well as having held several different positions on the city news desk. He is now a senior writer in the sports department.

 
Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson is a long-time columnist with the Ottawa Citizen, and a feature writer with several national magazines. In addition to the Citizen, his work appears regularly in the Financial Post Magazine, Outdoor Canada Magazine and Explore Magazine.

 
James Bagnall

James Bagnall, a graduate of the University of Toronto, began his career in business journalism in 1978. He has enjoyed lengthy stints at The Financial Post, The Financial Times of Canada and The Ottawa Citizen, where he has served as associate business editor since 1998. Bagnall has ventured widely in pursuit of stories in India, South Africa, the Middle East and throughout Europe He has won multiple national writing awards including business journalist of the year in 2003 and 2001. Bagnall divides his time between columns and investigative features that aim to illuminate the business of life.

 
Joe Banks

Joe Banks has been a full time coordinator and professor of the Journalism program at Algonquin College since 2000. Prior to that, since 1980, he was a reporter, editor and publisher of Eastern Ontario community newspapers in Arnprior, Almonte, Glengarry County and the south suburban and rural Ottawa communities of Manotick, Barrhaven and Osgoode. He resides in Osgoode Village with Diane, his spouse of 26 years. They have two grown daughters, Laura and Andrea.

 
Sheila Brady

A hometown girl and the Citizen Homes Editor keeps a close eye on the designers, architects, builders and innovative merchants changing the landscape of Ottawa. Homefront.

 
Dave Brown

Dave Brown retired in August, 2003, after a 38-year career producing daily columns about the nation’s capital at street level. He wrote more than 10,000 columns (equal in word count to 10 Bibles) and on retirement the newspaper called him “a legend” because of his consistent high readership. He continues to write a regular once-a-week column appearing on Sundays. On his retirement the Citizen wrote he possessed “a priceless journalistic commodity: he is a contrarian, one who does not ride with the pack.” He has produced columns on subjects ranging from questionable ethics among the professions to farting; from the excesses of the child protection system and zero tolerance to the horrors of war through the eyes of veterans.

Married twice, he has four children and two grandchildren. He is married to Sheila Brady, mother of two and the Citizen’s homes editor.

Born in North Bay, Ont., and raised on Manitoulin Island, Mr. Brown says retirement will give him time work on his unresolved problem. “I still haven’t decided what I want to be when I grow up.”

 
Jennifer Campbell

Jennifer Campbell grew up in New Brunswick. After completing a degree in international relations at the University of New Brunswick, and a journalism degree at the University of King's College, she went to work for one of the newspapers she grew up reading, The Saint John Times Globe. In 1998, after four years of reporting and a two-year stint writing a weekly column, she moved to Ottawa and began freelancing for various publications, including the Ottawa Citizen. She has written on everything from municipal elections to international affairs and her work has appeared in numerous newspapers across Canada. In 2004, she became editor of Diplomat & International Canada, a bimonthly magazine. At the same time, she began writing Diplomatica, our weekly column on Ottawa's diplomatic scene.

 
Martin Cleary

For more than 20 years, Martin Cleary has written a column about amateur athletes, teams and issues in Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley. Since September, 2007, he has expanded The Citzen's high school sports coverage with a daily blog and maintained a website. During his 34 years in The Citizen sports department, he also has written a ski column and a fitness column. His assignments over the past four decades have allowed him to cover six Olympics (Summer Games in 1976, 1984, 1988 and 2000 and Winter Games in 1980 and 1988), five world figure skating championships, the 1997 world women's hockey championship, and hundreds of Canadian, Ontario and Ottawa championships in about 60 sports. In 1983, he received the Doug Gilbert Medal as Canada's sportswriter of the year for his coverage of amateur sports in 1982. At the 54th annual Ottawa Sports Awards dinner for amateur athletes, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for sports media in 2008.

 
Andrew Cohen

Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University. A native of Montreal, he has an undergraduate degree in political science from McGill University and graduate degrees in journalism and international relations from Carleton University. Between 1991 and 1993, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has recently returned from a year at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

In his career of 30 years, he has worked at home and abroad for The Ottawa Citizen, United Press International, Time, The Financial Post, Saturday Night and The Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the Editorial Board, a columnist and foreign correspondent in Washington. He has won two National Newspaper Awards, three National Magazine Awards and the Queen's Jubilee Medal.

He has written and co-edited five books, among them The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are, and While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World, a national bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. His most recent book is Extraordinary Canadians: Lester B. Pearson.

 
Gay Cook

Gay Cook is a food columnist with the Citizen, cookbook author, cooking school teacher, govenor of the National Capital Sommelier Guild and volunteer with Christmas Exchange, Debra Dynes Community House and Epicurean Awards.

 
Randall Denley

Randall Denley has been examining local and provincial issues for the Citizen for 16 years, first as city editor, and for the last 11 years as city columnist. His focus is on how government spends your money. Denley's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

 
Ron Eade

Citizen Food editor since 1998, Ron Eade has for years indulged his passion for culinary adventure, and invites readers to do the same. At home he regularly experiments in the kitchen and tests new dishes on his wife, Nancy, and nine-year-old son, Graeme.

 
 
Kelly Egan

Kelly Egan enjoys a rare distinction among columnists: 35 years ago, he used to deliver the paper in Centretown. In his 24 years on the full-time payroll, he has covered beats from education to police to Ontario politics to quirky daily life in the Ottawa Valley.

E-mail

 
David Ferguson

Experienced designer knows how to maximize space in the most difficult rooms. He shows the way in Creative Space.

 
Avi Friedman

The architecture professor at McGill University is Mr. Small, having designed smart, comfortable homes and communities for more than three decades. Forward Thinking.

 
Dan Gardner

Dan Gardner is a senior writer and columnist with the Ottawa Citizen. After joining the Citizen as an editorial writer in 1997, Mr. Gardner became a feature writer and then, in 2005, a columnist. His work has won many awards, including a National Newspaper Award in 2002.

Mr. Gardner holds a BA and MA in modern history from York University in Toronto and a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School.

 
 
Ken Gray

Ken Gray is the city editorial page editor and a member of the Citizen's editorial board. Previous to joining the board, he covered city hall and the Ottawa transition board that amalgamated the 12 area governments into the new City of Ottawa. He writes a weekly column on area affairs. During the early '90s, he edited the Southam News-Toronto Star First Edition, one of the first forays into new media publishing in Canada. Over almost three decades in journalism, he has worked in numerous posts from reporter to senior editor at the Montreal Gazette, the Winnipeg Free Press, the London Free Press, the Regina Leader-Post and the Citizen. An avid tennis player and cross-country skier, he teaches a course in media law and municipal government at Algonquin College. He earned an master's degree in journalism and an honours bachelor's degree in history at the University of Western Ontario in the 1970s.

Recent Columns

 
David Warren

Talking about the weather

It has been very hot around here lately, though I'm inclined to attribute this to the arrival of summer in the northern hemisphere rather than to what was called "man-made global warming" (until its salesmen started hedging their bets with "climate change" instead).

 
Leonard Stern

Man of good faith

Earlier this week, Nasr Abu Zayd died at the age of 66 in an Egyptian hospital. Few people outside academic circles know his name, but Abu Zayd’s anonymity does not diminish the heroism — yes, the right word — that defined his life.

 
David Warren

A serious man for what once was a serious job

The last governor general I remember who seemed an appropriate choice for the position, and fully qualified in a reasonable sense, was Roland Michener. He served (1967-1974) in the shadow of Georges P. Vanier -- who was truly a magnificent viceroy, in every sense, and a thrill to think back upon.

 
Phil Jenkins

An island in the sea of Ottawa

When you walk across the elegant Cummings Bridge into Le Quartier Vanier, as it is now branded, there's a heavily treed, vacant island on the south side.

 
Gord Holder

Timeouts from LPGA Tour a treat for Richdale

Most of the women competing in the CN Canadian Women's Tour event at Rivermead Golf Club would want to be in Samantha Richdale's position.

 
Dave Brown

A guided trip down memory lane

The woman's fingers were dancing through the pages of several binders of preserved photos and clippings as she shared memories of her long and interesting life. Her pointing finger hit a long gone friend. "That's June. She practically raised us."

 

Blogs

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Autism answers

The discovery of genetic markers for autism, the result of Canadian-led research, is being celebrated...

Editorials
 

Dead air

Gord Miller, Ontario's environmental commissioner, made an interesting observation the other week: The...

Editorials
 

A Canadian tradition

There are many reasons why summer camping is a beloved tradition for Canadian children, and this week...

Editorials