It's a big world out there. Here are some of the ways I've covered it.
The series that never ran
In 2001 I went on a North American journalism fellowship to do some reporting from the Texas-Mexico border, based in El Paso. The series was scheduled to run in The Gazette in early September. Then 9/11 happened. I went down to New York City to cover the aftermath, and my Far West border series, now suddenly irrelevant in a world where "everything had changed," was spiked. I tried to salvage things post facto, updating the articles with some post-9/11 equivocations ("Things haven't really changed that much.") But my editors wouldn't budge. "Sorry," they said, "the series is old news now, so put it behind you and move on." I did. My last drafts went into a brown envelope and the envelope went into a box and eventually the box went into my basement. The other day I dug it out along with another piece I'd forgotten writing, a feature on the Canada-U.S. border that was published on Sept. 1, 2001 and that announced the (doomed) Tex-Mex series to come. The pieces still hold up; the issues they raise haven't disappeared. With Donald Trump in the White House and his pledge to "build a wall" against Mexico still very much on the political agenda, maybe it's time to revisit them.
Qc.-Vt.: The Northern Border
At the Haskell Free Library, I interview Richard Wright while my daughter jumps the international border. (Photo: Gordon Beck, The Gazette)
Tex-Mex: The Southern Border
Eric Baeza, 11, stands at the footbridge on the Rio Grande between San Antonio del Bravo, Mexico and Candelaria, Texas. (Photo: Jeff Heinrich)
Some other reportage from around the globe
The true story of Angela Polgar
Back to Bohemia: my father's story
Hong Kong's media at the handover
In Vietnam, a refugee's tale
Go east, Canadian expats
The end of the Stephen Harper era
(Watch for more archive deep-dives to come: stories filed from Kosovo, Gaza, Mali and other geopolitical hotspots.)