John Ibbitson

Who is John Ibbitson?

John Ibbitson is a Canadian journalist. Since 1999 he has been a political writer and columnist for The Globe and Mail.

He has written five books on Ontario and Canadian politics, Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution, Loyal No More: Ontario's Struggle for a Separate Destiny, The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream, Open & Shut: Why America Has Barack Obama and Canada Has Stephen Harper, and The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future with Darrell Bricker. His latest young adult novel, The Landing, was winner of the 2008 Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature.

He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1979 with a B.A. in English. After university, he pursued a career as a playwright, his most notable play being Mayonnaise, which debuted in December 1980 at the Phoenix Theatre in Toronto. The play went on to national production and was adapted to a TV broadcast in 1983. In the mid-1980s, Ibbitson switched over to writing young adult fiction, including the science fiction novel Starcrosser.