His books have been translated into Dutch, French, German, Thai, Korean, Portuguese, Slovenian, Italian, and Polish.
He returned to Toronto, got married and started a family, working at restaurants in the evenings and looking after his children during the day.
In the early 1990s the plight of the homeless people he passed on his way to and from work in downtown Toronto caught his attention.
They later became the inspiration for Crosstown (1996, Riverbank Press) a book which is by turns tragic and laugh out loud amusing, a combination which Scrimger maintained through most of his works.
While attending a one-week writing program at the Humber College School for Writers, Scrimger wrote a humorous story about a stay-at-home dad going shopping with his kids.
Claire Mackay, a family friend and well-known children's writer herself, asked Scrimger to contribute to her humorous collection, Laughs.
Mystical Rose (2000), a dementing woman's prayer and life, has no literal basis in Scrimger's own past or present – except, as he says, insofar as we are all only one corner away from personal disintegration.