Growing up in Ontario, Canada, she had an early interest in wildlife photography and went on to receive degrees in media and the environment, with her Master's thesis focusing on bears and their interactions with humans.

Dickie spent her childhood in London, Ontario, photographing local wildlife as she grew up, with a desire to be involved with larger animals that did not live in the region.

Her master's thesis was on the topic of black bears and their encounters with humans in neighborhoods in the area of the American West, which she researched by traveling to Lake Tahoe and surrounding cities.

[1] Her interest in the subject came about after she learned about the Bearsitters volunteer group in Boulder, Colorado, that acts to make sure any bears inside the city limits are encouraged to leave without being harmed.

[3] After graduating with her higher degree, she wanted to learn more about bear species around the world and became a freelance foreign correspondent while traveling before being hired by Reuters as an official environmental journalist.

[18] She was one of the ten 2022 Thomas Lovejoy Memorial Press Fellows selected from international journalists by the United Nations Foundation to allow them to travel to the research outpost in Manaus, Brazil, in order to report on the environmental work done there.