Michel Drouin

Michel Drouin grew up in Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island in the 1950s and 60s, the subject of his memoir “Past the End of the road.” With no road out connecting to the southern part of the island until 1963, Port Hardy was only accessible by sea and air.

Drouin started writing at the age of 15 while in high school, contributing a weekly column on high school to the local newspaper the North Island Gazette.

After graduating from high school in 1971, he worked on the log booms with his father, earning enough money by Christmas to travel. He set out at the age of 18 for Spain and then crossed Africa by train, transport truck, army truck, hitchhiking and riverboats, turning 19 in Nairobi.

He continued to travel widely for several years, meeting his German-born wife in Japan. They settled in Canada in 1974, bought 10 acres on Malcolm Island in 1975, had a daughter in 1976 and lived a rugged rural life from 1978 to 1985, clearing land, building a cabin and raising livestock.

Distressed by the poor schooling on the isolated island, they moved to Vancouver in 1985.

Drouin worked in the logging and fishing industry from 1971 to 1990 when he became assistant editor of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union journal The Fisherman. He freelanced from 1995 to 2018 while working in season on salmon and herring vessels. His writing has appeared in BC Outdoors, The Georgia Straight, Gulf Island Gazette, Outdoor Life, Pacific Fishing, Professional Mariner, Westcoast Fisherman and Western Sportsman.

He plays electric and upright bass in a variety of roots-based music groups in Vancouver and is working on his next book; an account of his stump-ranching years on Malcolm Island.