Pam Hobbs

Pam Hobbs is a travel writer and author. Hobbs is the youngest of seven daughters born in 1929 to Edie and Jack Hobbs in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in southern England.

In 1940, soon after the start of World War II, she joined hundreds of thousands of other children in a series of mass evacuations from England's most vulnerable and heavily populated areas to the countryside. Her destination in Derbyshire was only 150 miles from home, but on the far side of a cultural abyss.

There, Hobbs lived in four different foster homes. In some she was warmly welcomed, but in others life took a more sinister turn as adults found it easy to exploit the children in their care.

Two years later, when imminent danger of invasion had passed, she returned home to Essex where her father and older sisters were enlisted in the war effort. By then a high-school girl, she joined the struggle to live with shortages, food rationing and bombings - and fears for family members in the armed forces. All of this is described in her 2009 memoir Don't Forget to Write: the true story of an evacuee and her family.

Hobbs first emigrated to Canada in 1950. She returned to England for a family wedding in 1952, and on her way back to Canada a year later she met her future husband, Michael Algar. To celebrate Canada's centennial year in 1967, Pam and Michael and their three young daughters started exploring their adoptive country in a camper van, eventually travelling between the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Hobbs' travel stories based on these family adventures were published in Toronto newspapers, and soon earned her an exclusive contract with Canada's Globe and Mail. For the following 19 years, she travelled the world, writing a minimum of 40 travel articles per year for that newspaper, and becoming one of the country's foremost travel writers. Since then, she has contributed illustrated travel stories to many of North America's foremost newspapers and magazines, has appeared on radio and television, and has written or co-authored six travel-related books. She is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada and has been an active member of the Society of American Travel Writer's Canadian Chapter for 30 years. Hobbs and her husband live in Toronto's Beach district, close to two of their daughters and four teen-aged grandchildren. Their third daughter lives in California.

• North American Travel Journalist Association - (Gold) 2006 and 2008
• Association of National Tourist Representatives, Canada, - (Writer of the Year) 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007
• Mature Media - 2005 (2 gold awards), 2006 (2 gold awards)