Michael Harris calls Philip Lee "one of the country's best-kept journalistic secrets." Drawing on his skill and experience as an investigative journalist, Lee based Frank: The Life and Politics of Frank McKenna on a wide range of published material, on diaries, and other confidential records, and on interviews with McKenna and those around him, from family friends to political enemies. Beginning with stories for The Sunday Express that prompted the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Cashel orphanage, Philip Lee's writing has received numerous honours. In 1991, Lee joined the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal and Saint John Times Globe, where he wrote the award-winning series Watershed Down and the book Home Pool. In 1998, after two years as editor of the Atlantic Salmon Journal, Lee returned to the Telegraph Journal as editor-in-chief. Under his leadership, the newspaper and its weekend magazine, The New Brunswick Reader, won several regional and national newspaper and magazine awards. Philip Lee currently writes for the Ottawa Citizen and is head of the journalism program at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
