In 1993 and 1994, he won two successive songwriting competitions staged by the "Vancouver Sun", the first time with a rewrite of Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as a tribute to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and the second with a rewrite of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" as a song about the 1994 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot. Both songs were submitted under pseudonyms, and on both occasions he donated his prize, a family pass to the folk festival, to a family who could not otherwise afford to attend.