Born in Norway in 1905, Fossum arrived in Canada in 1925. After an itinerant life of deprivation, he served 20 years in the RCMP where he became a lead rider in the Musical Ride, an undercover agent and a surveillance officer of Doukhobor protests. He was named Kitimat's Citizen of the Year in 1966. His memoirs are Cop in the Closet and Mancatcher: An Immigrant's Story of Logging, Policing and Pioneering in the Canadian West (Self-published / Comox: Lindsay Press, 1990), which Fossum described as 'a 60-year history of life in Western Canada', not strictly an autobiography.

[BCBW 2003] "Crime"