The author earned a B.A. in English from Mt. Allison University in 1960. Since then he has worked as a surveyor, migrant crop picker, insurance investigator, public relations executive, reporter, radio news editor, UPI stringer, and a teacher in both private and public schools. The one constant through all of this, and now retirement, has been building wooden boats. The smallest are two eleven-foot lapstrake canoes, the largest is a forty-foot strip-built cabin cruiser. He has taught boatbuilding to about one hundred youngsters from Grades Five to Twelve, sometimes with a boat, or several, being built in a regular classroom. Twelve of the pupils took home their own skin-on-frame kayak. He lives with his wife, Lyn, in Victoria, British Columbia.