Portrait of Catherine Porter

Catherine Porter

I follow breaking news, politics and social movements in France. I also dabble in culture as it intersects with daily life, whether it be a profile of a street artist, or how climate change is threatening the country’s sense of itself as expressed through traditional cheese. I’m especially interested in France’s attempts to address its colonial history.

I have been a journalist for more than a quarter century. I joined The Times in 2017 as the Canada bureau chief, based in Toronto. For the previous 16 years, I worked at Canada’s largest daily newspaper, The Toronto Star, as a columnist, feature writer, environment reporter and foreign correspondent, mostly in Haiti. I arrived in Port-au-Prince shortly after the 2010 earthquake and returned more than two dozen times to report. I consider the country my second home. In 2019, I published a book about my ties to Haiti called “A Girl Named Lovely.”

In 2022, I was part of a team that won the George Polk Award in Foreign Reporting and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for an investigation of the assassination of Haiti’s president.

I have a bachelor’s degree from McGill University in English literature and history, and a master’s degree from York University in English literature. Before moving to Paris in 2022, I also lived in Montreal and Vancouver, Canada; Ladakh, India; Dakar, Senegal; and Montpellier, France.

Above all, it is important to be fair, accurate and empathetic in my coverage. I want my stories to reflect the voices and perspectives of the people of France, and to reflect the diversity of the country. I’m proud to work for a company with a strong ethics policy and am committed to abide by The Times’s standards. That means I don’t publish anything unless I can prove it is true, and will make a third or fourth call to check the smallest detail in a story. I believe in holding power to account, but don’t publish without giving the subjects of my reporting a chance to respond first.

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