Vic Parsons
Vic Parsons is a retired journalist who lives in Victoria, Canada, and is the author of three books, several short stories and numerous articles. His latest work, his first full-length fiction, is Lesser Expectations: Charles Dickens's Son in North America. Although largely a fictional account of the life of Francis J. Dickens, who served as a police officer in both India and Canada, the book is actually a fusion with biography. Many of the events in Canada particularly are documented in the records of the North West Mounted Police (Mounties) but there are significant gaps, and this is where Parsons has supplemented the story with fiction.
Parsons's first two books were non-fiction. Bad Blood: The tragedy of the Canadian Tainted Blood Scandal was published in 1995 and tells the searing story of how Canada's blood supply became contaminated with the HIV and hepatitis C viruses, and the impact it had on people who became infected and their families. Parsons knows whereof he speaks: his son, a hemophiliac, was infected with both viruses through the blood supply. Bad Blood was shortlisted for two awards.
His second non-fiction book, Ken Thomson: Canada's Enigmatic Billionaire, was published in 1996. It is a short biography of the man who was then Canada's richest and one of the ten wealthiest people in the world.
Parsons was a journalist for over 30 years in Canada, with wire services and newspapers, based in Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto. While in Toronto he was national business editor for The Canadian Press and later became the Deputy Bureau Chief at the CP bureau in Canada's capital. He also wrote a column mainly on economics for the Thomson News Service. He has done occasional freelancing for the Globe and Mail, International Herald Tribune and Maclean's Magazine, CBC and NPR among others.