Dave Obee

Dave Obee is the editorial page editor at the Times Colonist. A native British Columbian, Dave started his career in journalism with the Kamloops Daily Sentinel in 1972, and has worked at newspapers in British Columbia and Alberta ever since.

He came to the Times Colonist in 1997 and assumed his current position in 2000.

Jody Paterson

Jody Paterson is a writer and communications strategist who has worked since 1982 for B.C. daily newspapers. She is actively engaged on a number of social fronts in Greater Victoria, particularly around issues involving homelessness or the sex industry.

Jody was executive director of the Prostitutes Empowerment Education and Resource Society from 2004 to 2007, and prior to that an award-winning newspaper journalist and manager at daily papers in Kamloops and Victoria.

Jody sits on the co-ordinating committee of the Greater Victoria Commission to End Homelessness and University of Victoria advisory boards for the Centre For Addiction Research. As a result of being named UVic's 2008 Harvey Stevenson Southam fellow, Jody is teaching journalism for a semester in the university's writing department.

Sarah Petrescu

Sarah Petrescu covers arts and fashion for the Times Colonist. She joined the newspaper in 2005 as an intern and returned as staff the next year after completing graduate studies in journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto.

In 2007, Sarah received a fellowship from the Jack Webster Foundation to report on development issues in sub-Saharan Africa. She has also reported for Reader's Digest, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and the Tyee.

Susan Ramsey

A Winnipeg transplant who now considers the West Coast home, Susan Ramsey began writing a weekly column, The Artful Gardener, for the Times Colonist in the summer of 2004. She is a self-taught gardener, but comes from a design background. Her former lives were as a child-care worker, a fashion designer, a high school textiles teacher and the owner of three flower shops in Vancouver. She has created special arrangements for celebrities and royalty. In addition to her life as a writer, she also owns Ramsey & Ramsey Flower Merchants in Victoria.

Rhona Raskin

Rhona Raskin is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and answers readers' questions about Life 101 in her advice column. She produced and hosted the international radio talk show Rhona at Night and has appeared as a guest and host on many TV shows. She is working on her second book. Rhona has a big silver poodle named Phoenix, a comic book collection and can't cook.

Michael D. Reid

Michael D. Reid is a film writer and reviewer for the Times Colonist. Born in Glasgow, Scotland and raised in Montreal, the film buff began his newspaper career as an entertainment writer with The Montreal Star. He was also active on that city's musical theatre scene, founded his own theatre company, Theatrix, worked with the late Canadian actor Maxim Maxumdar's Phoenix Theatre and wrote the musical revue Noel Coward Tonight.

In addition to reviewing films and covering Vancouver Island's film and television production industry for the Times Colonist, Reid has also written for publications as diverse as US magazine, Montreal Scene, Macleans, the Montreal Gazette and Tiger Beat. He is also a frequent guest on radio and television shows.

Reid has profiled countless celebrities including Bob Hope, Billy Crystal, Jodie Foster, Russell Crowe, Kim Cattrall and George Clooney. He takes particular pride in charting the growth of indigenous production and the careers of emerging local talent.

D.C. Reid

D.C. Reid writes weekly on sports fishing. He caught his first fish at age five by sticking his hand in a stream and pulling out a trout.

Now, Reid uses more conventional gear and has 50 years of fishing experience, landing more than 500 salmon in a good year. Reid has been a sportfishing journalist for 15 years with his articles appearing in more than 50 fishing magazines across North America, and on more than a half dozen websites.

He has written four books on fishing, the most recent the Vancouver Island Fishing Guide Reid is currently working on two more fishing books, and as President of the League of Canadian Poets, has had five literary books published as well.

Reid's websites are: dcreid.ca and catchsalmonbc.com.