Catherine is a historian and best selling author in British Columbia, Canada and has a passion for uncovering the untold stories of the province’s past. Catherine locates never-seen-before images to accompany her stories and gives fascinating and entertaining lectures about her work. She also collaborates with major tour companies travelling the coast as a historic interpreter on land and water.

Catherine earned her Honours BA at York University in History and French and is fluent in French. From the University of Victoria, Catherine earned a Masters in History in the Public History Stream in April 2018. Her most recent book, A Journey Back to Nature, a History of Strathcona Provincial Park, based on her thesis, was published by Heritage House in Victoria BC and won an award. Her other local history about a Second World War fort on the BC coast, Yorke Island and the Uncertain War, Defending Canada’s western coast was published in 2012 by Ptarmigan Press. In the same year, her short fiction piece “I Married Lord Bacon” was published in the anthology Escape.

Catherine’s articles and photographs have appeared in numerous publications such as the BC Historical Federation Journal, the Western Mariner Magazine, Compass Magazine, The Strathcona Collective  and the Georgia Straight.

Catherine began working with David Garrick, aka Walrus Oakenbough, on the story of his life in 2020, then sadly he passed away in May 2023. She continues to work from her copious conversation notes with Garrick and the multitude of journals and papers he left behind. Garrick was involved in numerous ecological campaigns throughout the 1970s and 1980s – from his role as director of Greenpeace in its formative years, to his devotion to anti-nuclear awareness up to 1989. From then until 1993, he was parliamentary assistant to Skeena MP Jim Fulton in Ottawa. Following this, he set up a camp and field station on remote Hanson Island in BC and his ground-breaking study of Culturally Modified Trees on Hanson assisted local First Nations with cementing their claim on the island as traditional territory. To support Catherine’s work on the ‘Walrus’ story click here.

She is also assisting Deborah Mearns with her memoir; Mearns has been an Indigenous activist since the early 1970s and became BC’s first Indigenous female lawyer.

When not at her computer or drinking tea, Catherine loves to swim in the ocean and go hiking. She has lived in the Vancouver Island region for over 20 years and divides her time between the Comox Valley and beautiful Alert Bay on Cormorant Island. Catherine keeps an office in Campbell River.

For information on upcoming talks and tours visit Future Appearances