Bradford Smith grew up an only child amongst a household of huskies and Malamutes, and at times he thought they were his siblings. He trapped by dog team with his dad, and hunted grouse and picked berries with his mom. He fished and snared rabbits and searched abandoned gold mines with his friends. He could run a small team of dogs at nine, and he fought his first forest fire at sixteen. He worked in construction in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, as a teenager. He long lined for halibut and cod in the Gulf of Alaska as a young man, and he worked seismograph exploration at temperatures below minus sixty degrees on the Arctic Ocean. He eventually returned to work in the north, particularly Alaska's North Coast.
Brad lived in Atlin, British Columbia, Canada, a historic gold mining town nestled deep in the wilderness. Isolated and forgotten, in 1967 the population was estimated at two hundred. It was a town without a sewer or water system, and most households burned wood for heat. People ate moose meat and lake trout and grew their own vegetables. He led life with an independent and creative spirit. Without T.V., radio or video games his imagination was fertile and his curiosity intense.
He came to writing later in life, concentrating on career and raising two sons early on. When more free time became available, he turned to writing in earnest, completing both books and a full feature movie script that he and his film partner hope to make in the future under the name of their company, MerrySmith Film Works.
Brad splits his time between working in Arctic Alaska and his home in Northern British Columbia Canada, where he lives with his wife and their dogs