I first read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast when I was twenty-one and studying French in Aix-en-Provence. Ernest’s recollection of his days in Paris, when he was a young man trying to become a writer, spoke to me directly because I, too, was writing in French cafes, hoping the muse would visit. I became intrigued by Ernest and wondered about the connection between his personal life and his literature.

 

Later, I studied history and law and graduated as a Commonwealth Scholar from King’s College, Cambridge. I spent much of my career as a law professor and dean at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, a chief federal negotiator resolving treaty claims with Indigenous people, and a labor arbitrator and mediator. I wrote about the law but maintained an ongoing interest in Hemingway–reading his novels, short stories, the biographies about him, and books about his wives. When I turned to biography writing, I found my legal experience invaluable because I had learned how to question witnesses and review documents and correspondence to ascertain the likely truth.

 

Ten years ago, I stepped aside from my demanding law practice to devote myself to writing. My wife, Kathryn Dykstra, gave up her law practice to become an abstract artist. We live in a Mediterranean microclimate on Vancouver Island’s beautiful Saanich Inlet. Sometimes, I moor our boat in the cove in front of our home and watch the golden-orange sunset shimmer across the water.