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Mike
Blanchfield

Mike Blanchfield has been a journalist on Parliament Hill since 1998. He is an international affairs writer for The Canadian Press and covered courts and police for the Ottawa Citizen, where he worked for 22 years. Blanchfield won the 2013 R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship and has traveled the world for his work, including to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Laos. Blanchfield is the author of Swingback and co-author of The Two Michaels with Fen Osler Hampson. He lives in Ottawa.

Videos

Shaughnessy Cohen Prize finalists Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson on The Two Michaels

Award History

2022 Finalist

Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing
for The Two Michaels: Innocent Canadian Captives and High Stakes Espionage in the US-China Cyber War

Jury Citation

“A blend of legal drama and spy caper, Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson’s engaging and impeccably sourced The Two Michaels is a quick but intense account of the 1,019 days after Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were snatched up by Chinese police, charged with espionage, and held captive. In telling the inside story of diplomacy attempts, geopolitics at play, and the quest for cyber supremacy, Blanchfield and Hampson point to the difficult foreign policy choices Canada faces going forward.”

— 2022 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize Jury (Charelle Evelyn, Jacques Poitras, and Lisa Raitt)