Sears, Dennis Patrick

Dennis Patrick Sears was born in Vancouver in 1925. As a young boy he moved to Saskatchewan near Moose Jaw, where he witnessed an event at the age of six which was to affect his entire life, that of the killing of the hired hand by his father. His father was never charged, and the family moved to central Ontario in Carden Township in 1933. Upon finding hundreds of books stored in his grandfather's house, Sears developed an early interest in reading. In 1943 he joined the navy, and after the World War II, became a policeman in Oshawa. He had already married and had three children, but left his family and job and moved to Calgary, where he continued a troubled life. He soon joined the army and was sent to Kingston to serve in the plainsclothes division of the Provost Corps. Years later he began operating a lift bridge in Kingston, where, in his spare time, he found a renewed interest in literary matters. Soon he was sending letters to the Kingston Whig-Standard, where a favorable response by the editors lead to a regular column, beginning in 1971. Some years later, several of his columns were combined in a book entitled "The Lark in the Clear Air". He has written other books since.(Taken from an article by Ron Base, entitled "Dennis Patrick Sears Grows Up", in Maclean's, June 1975).