Gary R Hein

I like to say that I was born in a barn but it was actually a renovated chicken coop on my maternal grand-parent’s homestead in rural Saskatchewan Canada. It was in the middle of the second world war and life was difficult so in the spring of 1945, we relocated to British Columbia. My younger brother and I were raised in the central Okanagan Valley where he stayed and I left after graduating high school. I was supposed to go to university to become a chartered accountant but I disliked class-room learning and joined the Royal Canadian Airforce instead. After 20 years, mostly as a pilot of jets, helicopters and four-engine heavies, I retired at age 38 to a hobby-farm on Vancouver Island. Over the next 5 years, I built houses, owned an automotive repair business, built and sold computers and worked briefly in retail before landing in investment management where I spent the next 25 years. Divorce in 2010 forced the sale of the investment business and semi-retirement and now I continue to work from home doing corporate accounting and writing when the mood strikes. Eighty-three years of active life has allowed me to accumulate a wealth of information to write about.