Crowe grew up in the small Ontario town of Harriston. Completed high school at Norwell District Secondary School in Palmerston. Attended Carleton University in Ottawa in the 1980s. Her journalism career began in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. She has covered a wide variety of subjects in her reporting, including elections, floods, forest fires, political leadership conventions and breaking news events such as the Columbine shootings in Colorado in 1999 and the SARS outbreak in Canada in 2003.