ABOUT

Born to Dutch parents, Peter grew up on a farm in the Outaouais region of Quebec. After studies at Santa Rosa Junior College in California, and at the University of New Brunswick, he graduated from McGill University in 1984. In 1985 he co-founded Montreal Mirror. Peter’s career as a journalist took him across North America. He worked at Canadian University Press in Ottawa, The Mexico City News, The Gazette in Montreal and as a correspondent in New York for Radio-Canada and Radio-Québec. Among his adventures, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a Soviet container vessel, was detained by Zapatista guerrillas on assignment in Chiapas, Mexico, and reported from the Turks & Caicos Islands and Yemen.

In New York he met Mimi Maxwell, a graphic designer. The pair moved to Toronto in 1994. In 1997 he joined the National Post. He became known for his witty, insightful columns in the newspaper’s Toronto section, including a series for which he walked across Toronto, and as an award-winning feature writer in the Financial Post. He has published two books for children. In 2012 Peter won a William Southam Journalism Fellowship to Massey College, University of Toronto, where he studied forestry and fiction. His stories have appeared in Toronto Life, Maclean’s, GEO, Chatelaine, Saturday Night, The Walrus and newspapers across North America.

In 2017 Peter enrolled in the Master of Forest Conservation program at the  University of Toronto. He lives in downtown Toronto with his wife, daughter, son, dog and cat.The family also enjoy time on their land in Madoc, Ontario.