Peter Kazaks

Peter Kazaks was born in Riga, Latvia. As the Russian communists advanced toward the end of the Second World War, his parents took the young family and fled. The family eventually settled in Canada. Peter Kazaks graduated from McGill University in math and physics and then went to the USA for graduate work, obtaining degrees at Yale and University of California, Davis. He spent twenty-five years as a physics professor at New College in Sarasota, FL. Now retired, Peter Kazaks is living again in Davis, California. His six children are the joys of his life.

A love of the outdoors began in boyhood on family vacations and as a camp counsellor in Quebec. That love has culminated in the summer long canoe trips in the far north that are recounted in the two books listed here. Travel in the sub-arctic so captivated Peter Kazaks that he read everything available about the history of exploration and travel in those regions. In Peter Kazaks' book Land Serene, much of the history of the Great bear Lake and Coppermine River region is interwoven with the account of his own canoe travel. That account also revisits much of the territory in George Douglas' northern classic, Lands Forlorn.

In recent years Peter Kazaks has travelled extensivly along the Pacific coast and in the mountains and deserts of the American west, almost always with his youngest son, Hazen.