Patricia W. Elliott
Patricia W. Elliott is a Canadian investigative journalist and nonfiction author whose work has appeared in Saturday Night, Canadian Living, The Toronto Star, CBC Online, Briarpatch, Canadian Forum and numerous other publications.
In Canada, she’s investigated group home abuses, the heroin trade, toxic industry emissions, water contamination, and government malfeasance. Internationally, she has reported on Pakistan, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Burma, and spent one year teaching at a forestry college in rural Hunan in the mid-1980s. As a former news reporter for the Bangkok Post she covered general news, refugee issues and the drug trade, including travelling to Burma’s Golden Triangle region to interview Khun Sa, indicted by the U.S. government as the world’s largest heroin trafficker. This experience led to an interest in Burma/Myanmar, which continues to be the focus of much of Elliott’s journalism, including a book, The White Umbrella, several articles and, more recently, a documentary film, Breaking Open Burma.
Elliott holds a master’s degree in media studies and production, and a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies. Her MA thesis, “Another Radio is Possible,” focused on the community radio work of refugee and migrants from Burma living in Thailand, while her PhD work, “Independent Voices,” examined community media sustainability in Canada.
Elliott was one of the founding volunteers involved in launching J-Source, Canada’s journalism news website, and was editor-in-chief from 2016 to 2018. She founded the journal Facts & Frictions/Faits & frictions in 2020, served as its editor-in-chief until July 2025, and continues to sit on the editorial board.
Elliott spent 20 years teaching writing and journalism at the University of Regina and First Nations University of Canada. As part of her teaching and research, she worked with the Investigative Journalism Foundation’s Patti Sonntag, alongside colleagues across the country and internationally, to help establish a model for collaborative investigative journalism in Canada. Investigative collaborations her students participated in won numerous awards and accolades from the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Indigenous Journalists Association, the Canadian Journalism Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the Hillman Awards Canada Foundation, and the Michener Awards Foundation.
