I am a native son, born in Vancouver in 1923.  My early years were played out on the city's eastside, a grand and carefree place for a boy to grow with minimal adult supervision.  I don't remember that except for music, the arts even being a minimal part of my life.
My introduction to line, to texture and to image was through a friend's father who could, with a knife and veiner chisel, turn a piece of yellow cedar into what was to me a live and shaggy coated bear.  My uncle used a pen or brush to make a line speak.  they were special men to me.  A neighbour lady who was a librarian at the Vancouver Public Library pointed me at the wealth of information there as well as the treasures at the Art Gallery.  Those people and those places served, I suppose, as my classroom and my teachers.
I have never had the urge to influence another person by means of an image, certainly not as social or moral illustration. I suppose I am really a collector.  When I see something attractive, beautiful or visually satisfying I am, at that time, painting of drawing in my mind.  Very often those images find their way onto paper or panel, to be given away or sold, perhaps to be painted over or put into a pile of things that are not good enought to sell but too good to throw away.  In my mind things are comfortably real when I can hold the drawing or painting in my hands.  When a person comes into possession of one of my pieces they have a bit of me.