Arts and Entertainment
Christophe Bourillon is executive director of the World Federation of Science Journalists. He spent more than 25 years in international and national policy development, communications, media and public affairs in the fields of climate change, energy, environment and sustainable development. Christophe was the first director of the European Wind Energy Association, the first editor of the magazine WindDirections.
Peter Haggert is director of Haggert Media Group, an organization providing business-to-business marketing planning, content and execution primarily for the Microsoft community of partners, events and consultants. This follows a 30-year career as editor-in-chief of daily and community newspapers in three provinces across Canada. Haggert is a former board member for the Local Media Association and the Ontario Press Council, and was long-time chair of the Atlantic Journalism Awards.
Lee-Anne Goodman is a veteran journalist and communications specialist who has worked in Washington, D.C., Ottawa and Toronto covering everything from the political ascent of Barack Obama during her years as White House correspondent to the fatal 2014 shooting on Canada’s Parliament Hill. She’s the senior director of content for Provident Communications Inc. and also works editing politics and business copy for the Conversation Canada.
Beat Reporting
Jonna Brewer is an award-winning journalist based in Moncton, where she is currently host of Information Morning, CBC’s local morning show.
Stephen Bindman is special advisor on wrongful convictions at the federal Department of Justice. In May, he will begin an interchange at the faculty of common law, University of Ottawa, where he teaches a course on wrongful convictions. He worked previously as national legal affairs correspondent for Southam News, based in Ottawa, and is a former president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
Peggy Curran worked at the Montreal Gazette for 35 years as a general and beat reporter, parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa, city columnist, TV critic, feature writer and city editor. She has received numerous prizes for her history and science writing and was an NNA finalist in 2010 in the Explanatory Work category. She is now a visual artist.
Breaking News
Karine Fortin is director of communications at the Canadian Union of Public Employees. She previously held senior management positions in the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party of Canada. Karine worked as a national reporter at Le Devoir and La Presse Canadienne, and was editor of Le Trente, a monthly magazine published by the Quebec Federation of Professional Journalists.
Shannon Miller has been a journalist for two decades, working in small, medium and large daily newsrooms in British Columbia. She held every role imaginable including managing editor, senior news editor and assignment editor at the Vancouver Province. Miller is currently communications manager for the B.C. Ambulance Service.
Mike Omelus has spent more than half of his 35-plus years in the Canadian news business in senior leadership roles, most recently as vice-president of national news and newsgathering for Global News. He was instrumental in designing and launching Global’s award-winning multi-market content initiative. Before Global, Mike spent five years at CTV’s Business News Network as executive producer, and held several key roles during a 21-year career at the Canadian Press, including general news director (broadcast), senior parliamentary correspondent and Washington correspondent.
Business
Jack Aubry worked as a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen for 27 years, mostly as a national writer on Parliament Hill, after serving as the Outaouais bureau chief and covering Ottawa city hall. He won a National Newspaper Award for Investigations in 1990. He is currently director of consultations and media relations for Finance Canada.
Laura Bobak is a senior communicator for Infrastructure Technology Services, an IT division of the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services. She is a former journalist, and has worked for Thomson and Irving papers as well as Sun Media, the Canadian Press and Transcontinental. She was part of a team nominated for an NNA in the 1996 Special Project category.
Chris Welner is an editor and writer with more than 35 years’ experience. He has worked at the Toronto Star, Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald and in government communications, international sport and the energy industry. He recently retired after eight years as editor of IMPACT Magazine in Calgary. Chris was the 2012 Alberta Magazines Editor of the Year and vice-president of the Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Association.
Columns
Paul Cantin worked as a daily newspaper reporter and music and film critic in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Toronto before serving as senior reporter at canoe.ca. He has held senior communications roles with Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the Health Council of Canada, University of Toronto faculty of medicine, Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and currently at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management.
Satya Brata Das is a best-selling author, community volunteer, board director and strategist. His career as an editorialist, columnist, and foreign correspondent spanned the last quarter of the 20th century, in the glory days of Southam newspapers.
Anne McNeilly is an associate professor at Ryerson University after more than 25 years as a working journalist, including 18 years at the Globe and Mail and eight years as a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen and the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. She won six provincial newspaper awards for beat reporting, feature writing, column writing and spot news.
Editorial Cartooning
François Demers was a journalist between 1965 and 1980, when he began teaching journalism at Laval University after being granted a doctorate equivalence. He was dean of the Faculty of Arts between 1987 and 1996, and is currently director of the graduate programs in public communication at Laval.
Athana Mentzelopoulos works for the Canadian Credit Union Association as vice-president of government relations. Before that she worked in government at both the federal and provincial levels, including Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment Canada and Health Canada.
Leslie Shepherd was a reporter, editor and manager for more than 30 years in Canada, the United States and Europe, working for the Canadian Press, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail. She spent the past 10 years in health-care communications.
Editorials
Jennifer Lanthier is the director of editorial strategy for University of Toronto Communications. A former news agency and newspaper reporter, she is also an award-winning children’s author published by Harper Collins, Penguin Canada, Fitzhenry & Whiteside and Clockwise Press. Jennifer is a member of the board of PEN Canada, an organization devoted to freedom of expression and the protection of writers and reporters.
Brian Kappler started at the Windsor Star, then spent 30-some years at the Montreal Gazette as copy editor, “people” editor, entertainment editor, national editor, baseball beat writer, city editor, assistant managing editor and finally editorial page editor. For most of that time he also moonlighted as columnist Doug Camilli. Brian spent three years writing editorials at the National in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Susan Murray spent more than 20 years as a reporter and foreign correspondent, mainly for CBC. She was also a political commentator for TVOntario. After leaving journalism, Susan worked as a political aide in international development and as an executive in the forest industry. She teaches English to refugee women and helps run a lunch-and-learn program at a school for teenage mothers.
Explanatory Work
Derek Ferguson is co-founder of Dawson Ferguson Strategies, an Ottawa-based communications company that specializes in customized strategic communications, public relations and advocacy for the public and private sector. He has more than a decade’s experience as an award-winning leader in the federal public service, and 20 years as a provincial and national political journalist with the Toronto Star.
Martine Turenne is editor-in-chief of La Conversation, the French-Canadian edition of the international website for academic journalism the Conversation. Previously, she was editor-in-chief of Droit-Inc and Espresso-Jobs, specialty websites covering legal and IT news, and held a variety of positions within the Québec media landscape at TC Media (Les Affaires and Commerce), Québecor (Le Journal de Montréal, TVA-Argent), L’actualité and Radio-Canada.
As a journalist, Anthony Wilson-Smith reported from more than 35 countries and all of Canada’s provinces. He served four years as editor of Maclean’s magazine. Since 2012, he has been president and CEO of Historica Canada, the country’s largest non-profit devoted to Canada’s history and the values of citizenship.
Feature Photo
Gary Hershorn is photo editor for Fox News Channel in New York. He began his career with United Press Canada in 1979 in Toronto, and was with Reuters from 1985 to 2014. He worked as chief photographer for Canada as well as a senior photographer in Washington, D.C., picture editor-Americas, and global sports pictures editor.
A.P. Hovasse began his photojournalism career in the mid-1980s at Reuters in Brussels and London. He then moved to AFP/EPA where he launched a Moscow bureau, worked as a freelance in Paris before being hired as supervising photo editor for the Associated Press in London. He then moved to Toronto to help launch the photo department at the National Post, and later worked as director of photography for La Presse, photo supervisor for the Vancouver Olympics and director of photography for QMI.
Bruno Schlumberger, a graduate of Ryerson, spent 33 years as a staff photographer at the Ottawa Citizen, and retired having won six National Newspaper Awards.
International
Peter Donolo is vice-chair of H+K Strategies Canada and is a strategic advisor to H+K’s senior management and its clients. Peter served as director of communications to prime minister Jean Chretien, worked as a senior executive in the private and public sectors and has represented Canada abroad as a senior diplomat.
Catherine McKercher, professor emerita at the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication, is a former newspaper and wire service journalist. She is the author, co-author or co-editor of several books, including a history of newspaper unions and a reporting textbook. Her newest book, Shut Away: When Down Syndrome was a Life Sentence, looks at the rise and fall of institutions for people with intellectual disabilities. It will be published later this year by Goose Lane Editions.
Nancy Wood has been a journalist for 34 years, working in print, radio and television. She was a National Assembly reporter for the Montreal Gazette, a Queen’s Park reporter for the Toronto Star and a senior writer in Maclean’s magazine’s Ottawa bureau. She is currently a news anchor and online contributor for CBC TV in Montreal.
Investigations
Ingrid Bejerman is a journalist, scholar and manager specializing in cultural reportage, Latin American matters and journalism training. She served as reporter and columnist for O Estado de Sao Paulo in Brazil, as program co-ordinator for the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for Journalism in Colombia, and as director of the Cátedra Latinoamericana Julio Cortázar at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Ingrid teaches courses in journalistic theory at Concordia University.
Mark Bulgutch spent more than 35 years with CBC News, beginning as a reporter and retiring as the senior executive producer of CBC TV News and CBC Newsworld, now CBC News Network. He has been teaching journalism at Ryerson University since 1987.
Fred Vallance-Jones is associate professor of at the University of King’s College in Halifax, where he specializes in investigations and data journalism and teaches in the master of journalism program. He is an NNA winner for investigations and a Michener Award nominee. His reporting career spanned 23 years, at the CBC and Hamilton Spectator. He is co-author of two journalism textbooks.
Local Reporting
Paul Delean had a newspaper career of more than 40 years, the last 35 at the Montreal Gazette where he was a general news reporter, sports writer, arts reporter, movie critic and business writer. Before joining the Gazette in 1981, he worked at the Timmins Daily Press, Barrie Examiner, Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal and Windsor Star.
Rod Mickleburgh was a journalist for more than 40 years, 23 of them at the Globe and Mail. He was co-winner of the Michener Award for coverage of Canada’s tainted blood scandal, and the Globe’s Beijing bureau chief during the 1990s. Since leaving the Globe in 2013, Rod has kept busy freelancing, blogging and writing On the Line, a book about B.C. labour history.
Janice Neil is chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism and teaches students in the bachelor of journalism and masters of journalism programs. After joining the faculty in 2007, she also served as editor-in-chief of J-Source.ca. Her professional journalism career included working as a senior producer, reporter and writer with CBC and senior producer/Ottawa bureau chief of TVOntario. She was also on the journalism faculty at Carleton University.
Long Feature
Beth Gorham is manager of public affairs at Carleton University after a long journalism career, much of it at the Canadian Press, where she served as Ottawa bureau chief and Washington correspondent. She won a National Newspaper Award in 1993 for stories on the Innu suicide crisis in Davis Inlet, NL.
Rosa Harris got her start as a reporter at the Sherbrooke Record and has had articles published in Fortune, Chatelaine, Saturday Night, Maclean’s, Canadian Business, Equinox, Canadian Geographic, the Ottawa Citizen and the Victoria Times Colonist. She has taught journalism at Royal Roads, Carleton, Concordia and Victoria universities. She is the author of Boomerville, a collection of columns on her generation, published in 2015 by Manor House Press.
Jean Roy worked for 15 years at La Presse Canadienne, including five years as vice-president of French services. He spent five years at TC Transcontinental Media where he was editor-in-chief at Les Affaires, assistant publisher at Metro and director of operations for the Quebec-Ontario newspapers group. He also spent eight years at Le Journal de Montreal as assistant managing editor and assistant sports director.
News Photo
Peter Bregg has travelled to more than 85 countries capturing compelling stories with his camera. He worked as chief photographer at Maclean’s for 17 years and has also worked as a photographer and photo editor with the Canadian Press in Ottawa, the Associated Press in London, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., and as official photographer to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Peter has won numerous awards including a World Press Photo Award, a National Newspaper Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation 2014.
Jon Murray spent 35 years in news photography working for the Vancouver Province, the Canadian Press, the Vancouver Sun, the Edmonton Journal, United Press Canada and many international newspapers and magazines. He won several awards for news, feature and sports photography through the years.
Louie Palu is an award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker whose work examines socio-political issues. His work has been featured in BBC, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, El Pais, Rolling Stone and many others. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and currently is working with National Geographic.
Photo Essay
Erin Combs worked for the Toronto Star for 28 years and was the paper’s first female photographer and visuals editor. In addition to her news photography, Erin also had an extensive fashion portfolio covering European and North American collections. She now lives in San Diego, where she continues to keep her camera busy with freelance work and travel as well as doing philanthropic work for two non-profit organizations.
Julien LeBourdais worked as a freelance photographer with the Toronto Star, a staff photographer with Toronto Life, a contract photographer with UPI, a staff photographer and assistant newspictures manager with United Press Canada, and a photo editor with the Canadian Press. He then taught photojournalism at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., for 20 years.
Dick Wallace spent 20 years at the London Free Press covering regional, national and international assignments. The recipient of several awards including the Michener Award in 1975 and an NNA in 1980, he moved west in1982 to take the position of Calgary Herald photo editor, then graphics/design editor. His work now appears in classic car and hot rod magazines.
Politics
Karen Macdonald is the news director/station manager at Global Montreal. A Quebec City anglo, Karen has worked in newsrooms in Quebec City and Montreal, where she learned how to do just about everything including setting type. She loves to brag about all the bright journalists she has given jobs to in her career of 30-plus years, and to remind people that she was the editor and publisher of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph for more than a decade.
Joyce Smith is an associate professor at Ryerson’s School of Journalism, where she has taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. In addition to studying the representation of religion in mainstream media, she continues to examine the evolution of journalism in a digital age. She has been a core member of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture, and worked previously at the globeandmail.com and the Toronto Star.
Paul Wells is a senior writer at Maclean’s magazine. For 25 years he has been a reporter and columnist in Ottawa, where he has covered seven federal elections and four prime ministers. Wells has also filed on politics, war and major events from 20 countries. He is the author of two best-selling books and a frequent commentator on television and radio.
Presentation
Mark Abley is a former feature writer, book-review editor and language columnist at the Montreal Gazette, where he worked for 16 years. Winner of an NNA for Critical Writing, he has also been shortlisted in the category of International Reporting. He is the author of seven books of non-fiction, four poetry collections and two children’s books.
Janet Matiisen is the former design editor at the Calgary Herald, where she worked for almost 25 years and won several design awards on her own and with her team. Currently, she teaches journalism at SAIT and looks for fun design projects.
Catherine Pike spent 28 years in the newsroom of the Toronto Star as a designer and editorial art director. A previous NNA winner and nominee in Presentation, she is currently co-ordinator of the advertising & graphic design program in the School of Media Studies at Humber College, Lakeshore Campus.
Project of the Year
Lucie McNeill was a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio in British Columbia from 1980 to 1993, later freelancing from China until 1996, and worked in international development assistance until 2008. More recently, she headed the University of British Columbia’s public affairs department before resuming China-focused work at Simon Fraser University.
Alison Uncles is the editor-in-chief of Maclean’s magazine. A former member of the NNA Board of Governors, she edited many NNA-winning features and projects in her years as associate editor of the Toronto Star and managing editor of the National Post.
Christopher Waddell is a professor and former director of the school of journalism and communication at Carleton University in Ottawa. He joined Carleton in 2001 after 10 years at CBC TV, where he was senior program producer for the National and the network’s parliamentary bureau chief in Ottawa. Christopher has also worked at the Globe and Mail as a reporter, Ottawa bureau chief, associate editor and national editor. He won two National Newspaper Awards for business reporting.
Short Feature
Carole Graveline is director of community engagement and partnerships at McGill University. Before that she was a reporter for Radio-Canada for many years, breaking exclusive stories on contaminated blood in Canada as well as conditions in a mental-health hospital that brought national inquiries. Graveline is author of a history of AIDS in Quebec and a past winner of an award from the Michener Foundation for reporting in the public interest.
Solveig Miller has worked as a journalist with Radio-Canada for 30 years, currently based in Montreal. She has also worked as a regional reporter in Quebec and a national reporter in Halifax. Miller currently works for Tout le monde en parlait, a program that revisits historical events.
Roger Smith started his career at the Canadian Press, where he was part of a team that won a National Newspaper Award in 1981 for coverage of the constitutional debates. Moving to television, he worked 29 years for CTV in Beijing, London, Vancouver and Ottawa. His current beat is old-timers hockey and golf.
Sports
Serge Gosselin worked for 35 years as a journalist. He started as a reporter for Sherbrooke’s La Tribune, and held management positions at La Tribune, Le Journal de Québec, Le Devoir and the Winnipeg Sun. He also served as vice-president, news, for Sun Media and managing editor for the French service of the Canadian Press.
Brian MacLeod is the editor of the Western Producer. He has worked at seven newspapers, including managing editor of the Sudbury Star and regional content director for Sun Media’s Northern Ontario group. He was nominated three times for editorial, opinion and analysis writing at the Ontario Newspaper Awards, winning in 2014.
Laurie Stephens was a reporter for the Canadian Press for 10 years, covering a variety of beats, including sports and politics. She left CP to work as press secretary to Ontario Premier Bob Rae, and since then has held senior communications positions in a number of organizations. She owns her own media consulting firm.
Sports Photo
Shane Kelley worked for more than 20 years as a photojournalist for three Canadian daily newspapers: the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star and Montreal Gazette. Along with news, sports and general photojournalism, she also photographed and wrote a weekly Style column for the Montreal Gazette for 15 years. Kelley has produced work for various American newspapers and magazines including Time, Newsweek, People, Town & Country, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, USA Today and the New York Times. Her current work focuses on architectural photography and video for large developers/builders, as well as business portraits.
Steve Simon is an award-winning documentary photographer and author of five critically acclaimed photography books. He has worked on assignment in more than 40 countries, and his work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Life, Time, Le Monde, Harpers, Maclean’s, the Walrus and many other publications. Steve worked for 10 years as a staff photographer for the Edmonton Journal, and was professor/co-ordinator of the Loyalist College photojournalism program.
Len Wagg is an award-winning photographer and photo editor. A visual storyteller for more than three decades, he is known for capturing the majestic beauty of his native Nova Scotia’s wildlife and salt-strewn landscapes. His work has been published in the New York Times, Maclean’s, Time and other renowned publications, and he is the author of five books.