Ten Reasons You Won’t Want to Miss Catalyst Summit 2022...
Read MoreTen Reasons You Won’t Want to Miss Catalyst Summit 2022...
Read MoreCATALYST Summit 2022 Returns to Highlight Psychedelic Medicine’s Growing Role...
Read MoreCurt graduated from Ryerson in 1983 with a B.A.A. in Radio and Television Arts.
In 1986 he joined the CBC and started working in what was known as Frobisher Bay and later Iqaluit, in the North West Territories. He lived here for nearly seven years.
His career with the CBC then took him to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he became a National Reporter. In Winnipeg Curt’s investigative journalism revealed a scheme hatched in the Premier’s office to create a dummy political party in order to alter the outcome of a provincial election. Curt’s work sparked a public inquiry which confirmed his findings about corruption and election officials who played a role in covering it up. His reporting won the Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism in 1999.
In 2001 he joined the CBC’s parliamentary bureau in Ottawa. Four years later Curt took on the job of National reporter for BC. His investigative work has been recognized by The Jack Webster Foundation, The Radio and Television News Director’s Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, and The New York Festivals.
Curt has been called on to report on countless critical incidents, catastrophes and humanitarian crises: from the devastating Manitoba flood in 1997, to the seminal Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, to more recent events including the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, the worst drought in Eastern Africa in a generation that same year, and Typhoon Haiyan’s swath of destruction in the Philippines in 2013. It was following his trip to the Philippines, after some particularly difficult conditions, that he was eventually diagnosed with PTSD.
Ever the journalist, even when he was at his darkest point, Curt collaborated on a documentary which made him the focus of the story.
Since 2007, no story has occupied more of Curt’s time, interest and curiosity than that of the death of Robert Dziekanski and the investigation into what happened. Curt’s credo is to keep asking questions until the answers stand up to scrutiny.
In 2020 Curt began writing a series of pieces for The Tyee about psychedelic psychotherapy and how Canadian medical authorities and governments were responding to the growing demand for access. The stories culminated in an investigation into the death of Amanda Leech, a B.C. woman who’s doctors withdrew life-changing ketamine therapy without explanation or reason.
Throughout his illness and treatment, Curt maintained an interest in the sprawling and complicated story that is the subject of Blamed and Broken. His treating physicians encouraged Curt to use writing as a therapy, even when he was unable to carry out the job which has been his life’s work for more than thirty years. It was good advice.
Curt currently lives in Port Moody, BC.