Born James Neill Breingan in Brantford, Ontario in 1950, he is a Nanoose Bay poet and photographer who has contributed local newspaper columns about nature in the 1980s and self-published at least six chapbooks of poetry and prose including Legendary Love (1991). He combines his interests in photography, nature and conservation. A single parent, he reveres the Walt Whitman approach to life and art. "I reviewed the Canadian scene..."; he says, "and got sorely fed-up with the books of fanatical feminism, the name-dropping notations about outlaws or insane painters...For Walt Whitman's sake, 'I sing the body electric'.";

[BCBW 2003] "Poetry"