Diane Walsh
Diane Walsh is a professional journalist and practical activist. Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1971 and currently based in the Pacific Northwest, she has lived in several cities in both Canada and in Europe.
Walsh graduated in Liberal Arts in Québec in 1990 from Marianopolis, a top-ranking C.E.G.E.P.and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to study for her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at the University of British Columbia.
Graduating from UBC in 1993, it was then a short journey to Victoria, BC, where she completed her Master of Arts at the University of Victoria, in the Interdisciplinary Programme, focusing on the study of policy and practice as applied in various elements of governmental/social governance. Her committee comprised faculty members from Sociology, the Faculty of Law, and Human and Social Development.
Her graduating thesis for her MA—The Silencing of Abortion Experience: an Institutional Ethnography—was as controversial and challenging in 1998 as it is today. Not a work to be read with a faint heart, it’s now published as an e-book on Kindle as well as being available in special collections from the University of Victoria, McPherson Library.
Diane Walsh’s experience has ranged from student journalism and activism to Police volunteer work in Canada. Additionally she worked with the Victoria John Howard Society, driving at risk youth and young offenders’ programmes and writing protocols to re-integrate young offenders into the community and workforce.
Beyond this experience she worked closely for some years with BC children and family ministries in progressing policies in the handling of at-risk families, mental illness and domestic violence. Here again Walsh combined both one-on-one casework with the more detached work of policy analysis and protocol writing.
Walsh holds professional certifications relevant to deep investigative reporting and political watchdog work. For example a certification from Minnesota’s Crisis Prevention Institute—a certification recognized internationally by police and public institutions —has provided journalistic insight into what is truly practical in discussing and dealing with physically violent and disturbed circumstances.
Further, she has a qualification as a certified Private Investigator, to facilitate in the often lengthy process of in-depth investigative reporting.
Now, as an established and frequently published international journalist, Walsh is in the enviable but highly responsible position of applying her social and professional experience to the world of social and political commentary.
She’s one of a minority of writers today who has actually worked on the frontline in seeking remedies to some of today’s social ills.
Her exposure to, and immersion in, cultures ranging from French-Canadian to British Columbian, to US and European, allow her some unique insights into what unites and divides societies and individuals.
Today, her published work can be seen as eclectic and exciting, with subjects ranging from human sexuality, marginalized people and politics to the logging of old-growth-forests.
Her work has appeared in magazines such as, Curve in San Francisco, Clout (formerly of Press-Telegram) in Long Beach,CA, and Outlooks in Calgary, Canada; print newspapers such as, The Prague Post, Czech Republic, Stanwood-Camano News in Washington State, Xtra! West in Vancouver, and The Socialist Worker in Toronto; as well as on-line sites, such as Straight Goods.
She has a regular column in The Lower Island News, Victoria democratic socialist paper of 26 years since 2007.
Dane Walsh continues to find unique connections to so many facets of societal and human interaction, always combining the philosophical with the practical—and always writing from the heart.