Born in 1936, Michael Poole studied journalism in Virginia and worked as a reporter for the Vancouver Sun. Poole's memoir Ragged Islands: A Journey by Canoe Through the Inside Passage (1991), nominated for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, was followed by Romancing Mary Jane: A Year in the Life of a Failed Marijuana Grower (1998) and a first novel, Rain by Morning (2006). Poole lived in North Vancouver before moving to the Sunshine Coast where he was media spokesperson for Save Our Sunshine Coast, a group formed to fight an abortive proposal to build an industrial rock mine in the Caren Range, with a loading dock in Wood Bay.

As a filmmaker he wrote and directed a Gemini Award winner documentary, Island of Whales, made for the PBS series Nova. Other documentaries included Tankerbomb and an excellent profile of the "logger poet"; Peter Trower of Gibsons, Between the Sky and the Splinters (1976), largely filmed at Jackson Bay. Poole also directed Beachcombers episodes in the 1980s and made programs for The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. A canoe builder, he restored a rare Peterborough canoe built in 1912, which now hangs in the Smithers airport to commemorate a trapper who had used it for more than 50 years. Mike Poole died at home on July 13, 2010.