Nicole Thompson
Nicole Thompson covers education for The Canadian Press, using cultural reporting and social-issue stories to show how people learn, think and respond to the world around them.
Books, authors and the ideas behind them
A large share of Thompson’s work centres on books and the writers behind them, treating new titles as entry points into wider political and social conversations. She has profiled novelists such as Emily St. John Mandel, exploring how her fiction about a divided America grew out of the post‑2016 political climate and the COVID‑19 era. Her coverage of Patrick deWitt digs into the practical rhythms of his writing life, including the long drives that shape his storytelling.
Thompson also follows authors whose work is closely tied to real communities, writing about Rebecca Godfrey’s posthumously published novel “Peggy” as a gift to the friends and circles that sustained her. Prize lists and ceremony nights are treated as moments to unpack the stories behind them, whether she is charting Montreal‑born David Szalay’s path to a Booker Prize win or examining how a Toronto priest’s award‑winning book confronts the homelessness crisis.
Across these pieces she gives as much weight to the ideas and lived realities in the books as to the prestige of the literary world around them.
Film festivals and screen storytelling
Thompson is a regular presence on film‑festival coverage, using premieres and awards as a frame for the anxieties and enthusiasms that surround cinema. Her reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival ranges from opening‑day dispatches about glam, glitz and geopolitical anxiety to daily round‑ups of crime films and documentaries.
In a piece on the Neil Peart documentary, she ties the world premiere to the drummer’s legacy and the broader appeal of music‑driven storytelling at the festival. She follows the arc of the event through to its conclusion, covering the People’s Choice Award win for “La Bola Negra” and treating the audience vote as a signal of where contemporary filmgoers are putting their attention.
The work balances red‑carpet detail with clear explanations of what the featured films are about and why they matter, staying close to the creative themes rather than just celebrity.
Social issues, environment and health
Beyond arts coverage, Thompson writes on social and environmental questions that sit close to policy and everyday experience. In her reporting on a book by a Toronto priest about the homelessness crisis, she links the literary recognition to the realities of encampments and the people living in them. Her feature on David Suzuki turning 90 looks at what decades of environmental advocacy have achieved and what has been lost, capturing both the sense of setback and the persistence of hope among environmentalists. Earlier work on health and ageing uses national data on injuries to show that falls are the leading cause of seniors’ hospitalizations, and highlights the call from experts for more preventive education. Across these stories she pulls together statistics, quotations and narrative detail to connect broad issues such as climate, housing and elder care with the lives of the people most affected.
Media, honours and the life/arts beat
Thompson’s beat sits on the life and arts side of the newsroom, where culture, health and books are treated as news in their own right.
She reports on the honours and institutions that shape that landscape, covering stories such as The Canadian Press’s nominations for seven National Newspaper Awards. Her work on national honours extends to profiles of newly appointed members of the Order of Canada, including figures like Michael J.
Fox and the scientist behind Nickelodeon’s green slime, framing their recognition within broader contributions to culture and public life.
She is consistently described as covering culture, health, books and entertainment, reflecting a portfolio that moves between education, lifestyle and the creative industries. Taken together, her reporting gives a communications‑focused view of how stories about learning, art and social change reach the national conversation through a major wire service.
4 more education journalists.
Abby Russchen
Abby Russchen ties education, community institutions and individual stories together, showing how policies and decisions register in people’s lives. She reports for CBC on education and community life, working across text, video and photography for different CBC platforms. Her education coverage centres student achievement, provincial and national test results, classroom technology and the forces shaping learning conditions, connecting policy language and expert analysis to observable changes in performance. She treats AI, screens and digital tools as part of the education beat, focusing on their impact on student well-being. She also reports on community institutions and local services, from bank closures and changing city status to small-business growth. Her human-interest features follow people, public memory and recognition, and her long-form background supports detailed, fact-grounded narratives across formats.
Alexa Phillips
Alexa Phillips reports on education as a financial system, tracing who pays, who benefits and who bears the risk when policy changes reshape schools and universities. She covers education policy, funding and regulation for The i Paper, with a consistent focus on money, power and their impact on students and staff. Her reporting follows fees, budgets and reform into classrooms and lecture halls, using concrete figures to show how tax changes, funding mechanisms and loan reforms translate into course cuts, job losses and access. Phillips brings wider experience on public services and regulation, including work on gambling oversight and healthcare access, so education sits in a larger accountability story. She writes straightforward, reported news pieces that combine policy detail, financial data and case studies, built from official records and regular call‑outs to readers affected by the systems she covers.
Alexandra Holyk
Alexandra Holyk is a multi-skilled journalist at CTV News who reports on education and youth issues through the daily lives of students, families, and local communities. She covers school and campus decisions, student safety, youth behaviour, and neighbourhood incidents, with a focus on how they affect the people directly involved. Her work includes stories on graduation choices, concerns about Black students in a school board, federal research funding at the University of Waterloo, and students who helped after a cyclist collision. She also covers vandalism and other local disruptions around schools and neighbourhoods. Holyk pitches, researches, shoots, writes, edits, and presents stories for broadcast and digital platforms. Her previous work includes video journalism for provincial coverage, along with reporting for campus and regional outlets and major Canadian newspapers and business media.
Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier ties system-level themes in Quebec’s school system to the immediate realities of parents and students, treating education as a lived experience rather than an abstract policy field. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy. Her work spans data breaches and digital privacy in schools, institutional conflicts and labour disputes that disrupt study plans, education on the campaign trail, and school infrastructure and land use. She reports on incidents like mass emails exposing sensitive parent data, suspended classes that leave students feeling like bargaining chips, and proposals to turn racetracks into schools. Her background in digital production at another major Canadian broadcaster shapes an online-first reporting style, grounded in specific incidents, clear descriptions, and detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.