Bertrand William Sinclair (1881-1972) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He immigrated to Canada with his mother in 1889. At age fifteen, he ran away from home to become a cowboy in Montana, after which he returned to Canada, settling in BC where he depicted in numerous novels the lives of loggers, fishermen and ranchers. Sinclair was enormously successful as a novelist; his novel North of '53 sold 340,000 copies. After 1922, he made his home in Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast and became a commercial fisherman. His VHF radio broadcasts to fishermen, known as "The Sinclair Hour," were widely known and respected. He did not retire from commercial fishing until age 83.