Randall Denley

Randall Denley is a Canadian journalist, author. He was a renowned columnist for the Ottawa Citizen for a time straddling the turn of the millenium.

Born and raised in London, Ontario, Denley graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a journalism degree in 1973. He spent several years as a journalist and editor for the Owen Sound Sun Times before joining the Citizen as a journalist in 1983. In 1992, he moved from the regular journalism beat to a political column with the paper, writing about both municipal and provincial politics.

Denley's first novel, a murder mystery titled Necessary Victims, was serialized in the Citizen in 2004. In 2006, he published The Perfect Candidate, a satire of local municipal politics in which Will Hacker, a former hockey player turned radio talk show host, is bribed by local developers to run a fake campaign for Mayor of Ottawa. His third novel, a murder mystery titled One Dead Sister, was published in 2010.

Denley took a leave of absence from the Citizen in 2011 to run as an Ontario Progressive Conservative Party candidate in Ottawa West—Nepean for the 2011 provincial election. He briefly returned to the Citizen as an editorial writer after losing the election to incumbent MPP Bob Chiarelli, but retired from the paper in 2012. He ran again in the 2014 election, again losing to Chiarelli.

Denley now publishes the occasional op-ed in newspapers like the National Post.