Born on November 13, 1921 in Winnipeg, he grew up on the edge of town, near the Red River, where he met hobos and heard their stories. He worked on CPR road crews during his teens and also lived in a cabin in the Whiteshell Reserve. He flew planes for the RCWF from 1939 and married an English girl he met during the war. He ran an advertising agency in Toronto and moved to Vancouver in 1953, where he sold insurance. He has also sold lingerie in the Yukon, worked as a prison guard and a railroad cop, driven taxis, built homes, built his own sailboat and worked as a night foreman in a factory. His stories have appeared in such mystery magazines as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock & Mike Shayne, Canadian Crime Anthologies Cold Blood 2,3,4 &5 and Northern Frights 2 & 3. Ames has received Short Story Awards from the Canadian Authors Association and the Okanagan University College. His fiction/non-fiction book The Ogopogo Affair was partially first published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine in 1984. He lives in the Okanagan Valley, at Oyama, where he tends an apple orchard.

Publications:

The Ogopogo Affair: With a Comprehensive Update of the Legendary Monster, Ogopogo (Mosaic Press, 1992)
Tales of Titillation and Terror - Compilation of Short Stories from the Macabre to the Erotic (Mosaic Press, 1996)
Amazon: The Complete 13 Adventures of Detective Lieutenant Cathy Carruthers. (Mosaic Press, 1998)

[BCBW 2003] "Fiction"