Tom Douglas

Location: Oakville, Ontario, Canada

Member Since: 18 January 2006

Professional Associations

 Travelwriters.com

 Travel Media Association of Canada

 Canadian Association of Journalists

Introduction

WHO IN THE WORLD IS TOM DOUGLAS? Tom Douglas, a Founding Member of the Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC) as well as a member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists, is a travel writer and travel promoter whose career has taken him around the globe and then some.

He rode the Trans-Siberian Railway when the Cold War was at its coldest. Touring Australia by motorcycle, he looked up the friend of a friend in a small town in Queensland and ended up buying a half-interest in a weekly newspaper. He has sailed the Atlantic half a dozen times, including first-class on the Queen Elizabeth 2. In addition, an 18-day Pacific voyage from Vancouver to Sydney, aboard the P&O liner Himalaya, included stops at Waikiki, Suva and Auckland along the way.

He has flown to Europe many times and counts among his most memorable trips a first-class flight aboard Air France where the caviar and champagne never stopped, and an ill-fated charter where an engine conked out over the North Atlantic in January, resulting in an overnight stay in Goose Bay, Labrador. The replacement aircraft also developed engine problems and there was a second unscheduled stopover, this one in Reykjavik, Iceland, before the flight finally landed safely in Luxembourg.

Several glamorous cruises in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the South Pacific have been counterbalanced by a trip across Morocco on a goat-and-chicken-festooned local bus. He has lived in France on two occasions -- once as a teacher on a military base and another time as a travel writer based in Nice, one of the exotic settings for the 14 romance novels he and his wife have had published in close to twenty different languages, including Russian and Chinese. Tom has also self-published a memoir of growing up in Northern Ontario and has had three best-selling accounts of incidents in World War II as well as a book about World War 1 produced by James Lorimer & Co. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Tom has chewed betel nut with the natives of Rabaul, New Guinea, and sipped tea in a stone cottage in the Outer Hebrides with his wife's distant cousins. East German border guards with machine guns (in the "bad old days") searched his train compartment for stowaways, and a Parisian taxi driver once threatened to punch him in the nose when, in his less-than-perfect French, Tom told him he was pretty when he thought he was telling him he'd been kind.

As a travel promoter, Tom has taken North American tourists by plane, ship and motorcoach to various European countries. In turn, he's been pampered as a diplomat, visiting such cities as Seoul, Tokyo, Paris and Rome while serving as communications advisor to a high-ranking Canadian politician. He has shaken hands with the late Pope John Paul II, the Prince of Wales, the King of Spain and the Prime Minister of Thailand, and has exchanged toasts with former members of the "maquis", the French resistance movement of WWII, at commemorative ceremonies in Normandy.

In June 1994, Tom and his wife Gail organized a trip aboard the Queen Elizabeth II to Normandy for the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion. The luxury ocean liner was taken over by veterans, their spouses and other interested parties. On board entertainment included comedian Bob Hope, WWII songstress Vera Lynn, the Glenn Miller Orchestra and newsman Walter Cronkite, who lectured on his adventures as a war correspondent during WWII.

In June 2004, Tom was an accredited journalist covering the 60th D-Day anniversary ceremonies in Normandy and in May 2005, he was selected as one of six media delegates on the Veterans Affairs Canada official pilgrimage to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands in Holland. He filed stories, with accompanying photographs, back to Canada where seven articles were published by the Ottawa Sun and others appeared in several Ontario weeklies. A major feature based on the trip appeared in The Canadian Military Journal, the official magazine of the Department of National Defence.

In addition, Forever Young, a national tabloid for seniors, ran an article based on Tom’s visit to the Dutch family that billeted his father in 1944 as one of the liberators of Holland during World War II.

Tom and his son James, a Vancouver-based vidoegrapher also produced a documentary, The Tulip and the Maple Leaf, about that Dutch family and the ties of friendship between Canada and the Netherlands.

Tom has had a number of articles distributed by Canadian Press, Canada's national newswire service, and these have been picked up by dailies across Canada. He has also sold articles to a variety of Canadian, U.S. and Far East magazines and newspapers.

Tom's best-selling books about the Second World War, entitled "Canadian Spies", "D-Day" and "Great Canadian War Heroes" are available for $15 each (including shipping and taxes) from the author at thomasmdouglas@gmail.com.

Experience & Expertise

I literally traveled around the world on one trip. I started in Oshawa, Ontario, drove my car to Vancouver, British Columbia where I sold it, took a P&O Liner to Australia with stops on the 18-day voyage in Waikiki, Suva Fiji and Auckland New Zealand. I ran a small newspaper in Queensland Australia in partnership with an Aussie for a year, then sold out to him and took a ship (Marco Polo) to Japan with a stop in Rabaul, New Guinea After three weeks of touring Honshu by train, I took a ferry to Vladivostok and then the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow. After a week in Moscow, I took a train to (then) East Berlin and then a train into West Berlin. At that point, I validated a EurailPass I had purchased in Australia and traveled throughout Europe for three months, with a short side trip to Morocco. I took a (then) CPAir flight from Lisbon to Montreal and back to reality. With refresher trips to individual ports of call since then, I have written dozens of travel articles (with photos) ever since.

Publishing Credentials

Hamilton Spectator, Ottawa Citizen, Halifax Chronicle- Herald, Fifty-Five Plus Magazine, Victoria Times-Columnist, The Beaver Magazine, Evergreen Magazine, East of the City, Forever Young, Doctor's Review, Canadian Military Journal,Financial Post Magazine, Canadian Travel Courier, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Toronto Star, Toronto Globe & Mail, Toronto Sun, Ottawa Sun (and many other Canadian newspapers as a stringer for Canadian Press Wire Service).

Awards Received

Not directly connected with travel writing but I am the best-selling author of three books about Canada's involvement in World War II. I have made tours of many of the battle sites on a number of occasions and in May 2005 I was selected as one of six Canadian journalists to accompany veterans to ceremonies in Holland commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands. On the strength of the articles I filed back to Canada, the Netherland Tourism Board sent me back to Holland that December to write articles about Rembrandt's 400th birthday celebrations in 2006. I have also self-published a book about life with my father after he returned from WWII. The book is called "Some Sunny Day" (listed with Amazon.com) and several of its chapters have won awards, including Honorable Mention in the Writers Digest Short Story Contest and the City of Ottawa Humor Award. Two other chapters were published as features by The Toronto Star. I have also written a book entitled "Valour at Vimy Ridge" and ghost-wrote the memoirs of both a Second World War Squadron Leader and an Aboriginal former member of the Canadian Forces. My books are available from me at thomasmdouglas@gmail.com

Clips & Samples (View All 7)

 Tourists And Locals Alike Are Victims Of The Great Canadian Train Robbery, Traveler's Check

 MONACO: The Fairy Tale Realm Of The Riviera , Financial Post Magazine

 Barkerville Delights Kids of All Ages, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

 Aruba The Happy Island Wishes You Bonbini, East of the City

 Dimitros Brettos Carefully Guards The Secret to the Nectar of the Gods, Equinox Magazine