Views from the Precipice

I am a writer, editor, and communications consultant based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I expect that this Substack will be a place for essays, commentary, and vignettes based on my six-decade career of “learning and earning” as a journalist, historian, and wordsmith-for-hire in media from broadcast to books. Some pieces will also touch on “learning and doing” in my eclectic personal life – upbringing, education, travels, adventures, recreations, politics, friendships, interests, cooking, and voracious reading.

I may post as often as weekly, but longer intervals may be required due to other projects and travel. Posts will be free initially, but I might add a paid subscription option if there’s sufficient interest and support.

About the title

In 2006 on Mount Hector in Banff National Park

“The Precipice,” my one and only radio documentary, aired in 1982 on the CBC Ideas program. It was an hour-long exploration of the reasons why people climb rock faces, frozen waterfalls, and big mountains. A precipice is literally a place from which you can fall (i.e., precipitate). The views from the top can be exhilarating and enlightening, while the views from below can be daunting and motivating.

The documentary – based on research, interviews, and personal experience – showed that risks can be mitigated by learning your limits, staying within them, and preparing carefully before expanding them. Experienced companions, expert teachers, mentors, and professional guides facilitate both the learning and expanding phases. That progression helped overcome my literal “fear of falling” not only in climbing but also in other activities, which have included: bicycle, motorcycle, and horseback riding; cross-country, backcountry, and telemark skiing; wilderness hiking in challenging environments such as the Rocky Mountains and remote areas of the Grand Canyon, as well as the everyday hazards of modern life. Metaphorically, the same rules have applied to the “fear of failing” in my work life. All have involved steep ascents and painful tumbles.

About me

Born and raised in the New York City area, I began working as a reporter and deskman for United Press International in 1965 while still studying political science at Columbia University. I transferred to the one-man UPI Toronto bureau in 1967, to the company’s Canadian headquarters in 1968, and to Ottawa in 1969. As Ottawa bureau chief until 1974, I led the wire service’s Canadian political coverage, aimed mainly at US and international readers, and traveled across the country. I moved west in 1974 for a job at the Calgary Herald and to pursue my interests in energy, horses, and skiing. I left the Herald three years later and began a freelance career that continues today. Initially I wrote mainly for magazines but eventually branched into a wide variety of projects and contracts in publishing, broadcasting, and work for corporate, government, and institutional clients. I became a Canadian citizen in 1979. A fairly complete and up-to-date resume is posted on my LinkedIn page.

Grand Canyon hiking in 2003

Topics

A large part of my paid work has centered on the politics, economics, technology, history, and geography of energy production and use – the whole spectrum from geothermal to nuclear, but especially pipelines, oil sands, and conventional oil and natural gas. I first wrote about climate change in 1983 and have witnessed humanity’s faltering attempts to mitigate it since attending the World Energy Conference in 1989. Expect commentaries on this fast-evolving sector.

Another professional focus has been forestry, a specialty that grew out of personal interests in national parks, wildfires, and land management. I have written or co-written histories of two Alberta forest products companies and their management areas, a general introduction to the provincial industry, and a book on forestry research in the Alberta foothills, as well as other stewardship and sustainability reports. I may post stories from this sector occasionally.

Other topics arising from my wire-service, newspaper, and magazine writing could include: Canadian and Alberta politics, farming and ranching, tourism, small and medium enterprise, transportation, and waste management.

I also hope to post various biographical notes and stories from time to time on this site. Those topics might include:

· Growing up in a journalistic household on Long Island in the 1950s and early 1960s

· 40 years of skiing

· 20 years owning, training, and riding horses

· Touring British Columbia and Alberta with a horse-drawn theater company in the late 1970s

· 30 years of climbing and mountaineering

· 20 rim-to-river hikes in the backcountry of the Grand Canyon

· Urban cycling in Calgary since 1974, mountain biking in the 1990s, bicycle touring since 2003 in 36 US states and all 10 Canadian provinces

· Co-founding the Calgary Alternative Transportation Co-operative, which operated carsharing here from 2000 to 2013

· Car-free living since 2000

· Sharing a house for 10 years with a professor of environmental science at the University of Calgary

· Living in a housing co-operative since 2002

· My interest in architecture, design, and urban planning

· Love of libraries and of used and antiquarian bookstores

· Watching Calgary grow from a “cow town” of 425,000 when I arrived into a sprawling, multicultural energy, technology, and finance center of 1.4 million today

To name a few possibilities.

Arriving in Matlock, Manitoba, in 2019 after a month-long tour from Minneapolis

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