​About

Hi, my name is Jesse.  👋

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The following prolix autobiography

flaunts a series of clichés and buzzwords

packaged within a tsunami of bullshit

that will (hopefully) convince you to like me.

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CHAPTER I: THE MILITARY

My first real peek into the life of an adult came as an infantry soldier with the Canadian Forces.

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It was about then I realized there are no adults—at least not here, where the grown-ups masquerade as professionals while firing automatic weapons at old Nazi targets and chain-smoking cheap cigarettes. Outdated, oversized children with nicotine as candy and guns as toys talk at dizzying speeds for 20 hours a day. (Sleep, if we're lucky, accounts for four hours – the minimum requirement for field training exercises – because we'll have more than enough time to sleep when we're dead, they said.) Nothing entices a tired young mind as much as shooting guns, tossing grenades, repelling from helicopters and digging two-metre-tall snow trenches in minus-40-degree weather with your new brothers and sisters in arms.

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The year was 2008, and as a freshly minted 18-year-old "adult," I was well on my way to becoming a trained killer. To further set the stage, Blogger was the world's top social media site. The Great Recession had plunged a dagger into the heart of the middle class. And political correctness – then but a fledgling, specious garden – began realizing its true form after more than a decade of zealous watering.

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On the heels of 9/11, our troops were seven years into the Afghan war. For them, railing against obscure evils was an integral part of the team-building process. Everything outside the cult of the military provoked ire—from the "ragheads" (the kinder of the two derogatory terms commonly heard in the field) to the leftists and even the everyday civilians all too familiar with a life of comfort and safety.

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Surely, these threats are overstated, I thought. I need to get the fuck out of here before they realize I’m not one of them.

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Lambasted as an eternal maggot and a potential malingerer, I nonetheless learned three timeless lessons—a sort of mental triptych on the cult-like tactics also used, as I would later learn, to deter journalists.

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1. Question everything, including long-standing traditions, and question everyone, especially the charismatic leaders of pyramid-shaped power structures.

2. Honour your instincts lest you fall victim to groupthink and afford your trust and individuality to external sources, which will inevitably dictate your life.

3. Blind faith reinforces the disguised interests of people with a penchant for depraved perversions.

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CHAPTER II: THE BAND

Honourably discharged like the ejaculate of a noble lover, I then spent more than a decade as the bassist of the reggae band Street Pharmacy.

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In that time, we signed with Handsome Boy/Fontana North and worked with Jeff Rogers, of Crash Test Dummies managerial fame, to book shows and tours across the country. We also charted several singles, including “Stone, Bricks & Mortar,” which reached No. 1 on MuchMusic—the top tastemaker of pre-Internet Canadian entertainment.

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My nearly three-year pandemic hiatus ended in September 2022 as I returned to the stage with the boys in Toronto. As of late December, we've booked 15 shows in Canada and the United States through 2023.

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CHAPTER III: THE MEDIA

In 2015, I turned another lifelong dream – the one where I write for a living – into a full-time gig.

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That year, I dove headfirst into journalism despite an industry-wide tailspin. Internet-driven declines in readership and revenue spelled ruin for newsrooms as "journalist" and "reporter" regularly topped the list of the world's worst jobs. Joyless vibes permeated the business, but in the words of the sexy incestual creep Jaime Lannister, "We don't choose whom we love."

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Speaking of fun, my work ended up taking an unexpected turn towards numismatics and philately—the study of coins and stamps, respectively. Since 2015, I've specialized as a multimedia journalist and editor in both the print and digital realms, connecting with the global readership of two long-running national publications, Canadian Coin News and Canadian Stamp News.

 

Two years later, I added freelance to my occupational repertoire. I ventured deeper into digital content writing for blogs and social media, and I began taking on ad copywriting, ghostwriting, public relations and other professional communications jobs.

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Today, I continue to contribute to print and digital publications as a full-time freelance journalist and editor while managing social media accounts for several clients. In January 2023, I launched a Substack newsletter called Power & Philately, which explores postage stamps as propaganda with a new edition published each week.

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CHAPTER IV: THE COMMUNITY

A local political junkie, I serve as the volunteer secretary of Fitzgerald Neighbours, an asset-based community development group in St. Catharines, Ont.

 

Following the words of Seneca and much like a stoic, I see politics as a critical duty beholden to all stakeholders within a community. Going a step further, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once called politics "the art of controlling your environment," the most immediate form of which is your neighbourhood. Never underestimate the power of you and your neighbours coming together, organizing and exerting your collective interests.

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But writing, music, politics—these are all just things we do.

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Defining who or what we are as people is a much more daunting task. Lately, I’ve taken a liking to Nietzsche’s view: "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."

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Being is becoming, and the possibilities are endless.