Eric Akis

Erik Akis was hired as food writer for the Victoria Times Colonist in 1997.

His recipe-rich, by-weekly columns are published Wednesday and Sunday. Akis trained in the 1980s to be a professional chef and pastry chef, and worked for 15 years in a variety of operations in Ontario and British Columbia, from fine hotels to restaurants to catering companies.

In 2003, his experiences as a chef and food writer inspired him to create the best-selling Everyone Can Cook series of cookbooks, which have four titles to date and more on the way.

Akis also work as a food consultant, providing services such as food styling and recipe development.

Eric Akis was born into a military family in Chicoutimi, Quebec and has lived in six provinces. Victoria, which he moved to in 1992, is now officially home, where he lives with his wife, Cheryl Warwick, also a chef, and son Tyler.

Robert Amos

Robert Amos was born in Belleville, Ont., in 1950. Since graduating from York University in Toronto, Amos has pursued a career in the arts. He was assistant to the director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1975-1980) and is art writer for the Times Colonist, which has published his weekly column since 1986. He is a full-time professional artist.

Pedro Arrais

Born with oil in his veins, Pedro Arrais has been in, on and around cars and trucks for over 30 years. His high-octane articles on anything that runs on four wheels appears in Friday's Drive section. Before he joined the Times Colonist full-time in 2006, his freelance articles appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines.

Kevin Bazzana

Bazzana holds a PhD in music history from the University of California at Berkeley and a master's degree in musicology and performance practice from Stanford University.

His two books about Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work -- A Study in Performance Practice, and Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould, established him as one of the world experts on Gould. In 2007 he published Lost Genius, a biography of eccentric Hungarian-American pianist Ervin Nyiregyhazi.

He has taught and written extensively about classical music for more than 20 years. Look for his column Thursdays in the Go section

Jeff Bell

Jeff Bell made his way to the Times Colonist, his hometown newspaper, in 1990 after a few years at community newspapers in British Columbia. He began his TC career as a feature writer before moving into cityside news.

His current duties include a weekly column Good Neighbours, which highlights the efforts of people and organizations to make the community a better place.

Bell has an English degree from the University of Victoria and a journalism certificate from the Langara campus of Vancouver Community College.

Beyond the newspaper building, he coaches a little soccer, plays golf very badly and tries to keep up to all his nieces and nephews.

Adrian Chamberlain

Originally from Gabriola Island, Adrian Chamberlain written about arts and entertainment for the Times Colonist since 1987. His Backstage column appears each Saturday. As well, he writes a column for the Sunday books pages. Before coming to Victoria, he was an arts writer for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Chamberlain has won three B.C. Newspaper Awards for arts writing. In his spare time he plays keyboards for a rhythm and blues band. His heroes are Ricky Gervais, Larry David, Ray Charles, Christopher Walken and Aretha Franklin.

Helen Chesnut

As a garden columnist in the Times Colonist, Helen Chesnut weaves stories about friends and neighbours into her descriptions of gardening procedures and favourite ornamental and edible plants. She indulges her passion for food and cooking by finding ever new ways of preparing the vegetables and fruits harvested in her garden, and passing along her tastiest results in columns.

Helen grew up in Victoria and went to university in Winnipeg. Before settling down to home and family, she taught grade 11 and 12 English in various high schools in the East Kootenays, taking a few years out to travel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

She spent a summer as the English-speaking companion to the daughter of a French diplomat on Cap Ferat and a year tutoring the daughter of an American couple and typing for an American author in the small village on Rhodes where the Guns of Navarone was filmed. Helen taught for another year in a senior secondary school within the compound of a tribal king in Kampala.

Helen's columns are a blend of timely step-by-step directions to essential gardening tasks, descriptions of outstanding plants and their cultivation, reports on doings in her garden, recipes, reviews of new gardening books, and a diary of local garden-related events. One column each week is devoted to answering questions from readers.

Her columns are published in the Life section of the Times Colonist on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Mike Devlin

Mike Devlin has been a member of the Times Colonist arts and entertainment section since 1997. Mike graduated shortly afterward from Camosun College?s Applied Communication Program, where he specialized in broadcasting. He spent three years in commercial radio, before working full-time for the Times Colonist.

Mike writes a weekly pop-culture column, 10 Things, which is published each Monday, and also recaps the week?s new CD releases with a column that appears Wednesdays. In case you?re wondering, Mike really does listen to the CDs piled on his desk. His favourites quite often have something to do with the gone but not forgotten Uncle Tupelo.

Cleve Dheensaw

Cleve Dheensaw has been a sports writer for the Times Colonist since 1981. A native of Victoria, he is a graduate of Victoria High School and the University of Victoria.

In nearly three decades of writing about Island athletes, Dheensaw has covered the 1996 Atlanta and 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 1998 Kuala Lumpur and 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.

His range of stories - whether about Island World Cup soccer and Super Bowl winners to Silken Laumann, Steve Nash, Simon Whitfield , the Gait twins and the ECHL Salmon Kings - capture an era in Island sport. He is also the author of five books about the Summer Olympics, Commonwealth Games, B.C. lacrosse and the history of sport on Vancouver Island.

Brian Drewry

Brian Drewry has been covering sports for more than 20 years and has been the Times Colonist's sports editor since 2007.

Born in Vancouver and raised in the Lower Mainland, Drewry's career has taken him to Portage la Prairie, Prince George and Edmonton before Victoria. He has covered everything from junior hockey (WHL, B.C. Hockey League, Alberta Junior Hockey League and Manitoba Junior Hockey League), to the NHL, ECHL, CFL, top-level curling to college and high school sports to the Canadian Finals Rodeo. Among the major events Drewry has covered are two Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the Air Canada Cup national midget hockey championship, the Champ Car Edmonton Grand Prix, and the FIFA Under-20 Soccer World Cup. After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Physical Education from the University of Alberta, Drewry attended the journalism program at Langara College in Vancouver before moving to Edmonton for his first real job as a journalist.

Pam Freir

Pam Freir has been writing her weekly column, Pleasures of the Table for the Times-Colonist since 1997. A few years ago her husband, Chris Bayliss, seeing that she was approaching melt-down in the face of an approaching deadline, offered to help. He has been co-writing the column ever since. Pam and Chris, now semi-retired from ad biz careers in Toronto, live with their dog and two elderly cats on Galiano Island. They are both curious about, and enthusiasts of, everything pertaining to food. Pam's biggest fear is that she will be mistaken for an expert, a mentor, a kitchen-based guru. She's definitely not, and neither is Chris. But you can depend on them for an entertaining commentary on the ever-fascinating world of food and drink in the Life Section each Wednesday.

Tony Gioventu

Antonio (Tony) Gioventu is the executive director and strata property adviser for the Condominium Home Owners' Association of B.C. (CHOA). He brings 25 years' of experience in management, real estate development, construction, building operations, and strata property legislation to this position.

Tony is editor of the CHOA Journal, which is published quarterly by the association and has a provincewide circulation of more than 10,000 copies.

Tony's experience and knowledge have been recognized by his appointment as a consumer representative and acting chair of the Provincial Advisory Council to the Homeowner Protection Office, appointment to the board of directors of the Homeowner Protection Office and the B.C. Building Envelope Council. Tony is a regular industry speaker and guest lecturer at over 35 annual conferences and seminars throughout B.C., is a regular guest speaker on Realty TV (a City TV program), and an author of publications on strata bylaws and governance.