M. Wylie Blanchet was born Muriel Wylie Liffiton on May 2, 1891, in Montreal, Quebec. She married Geoffrey Orme Blanchet in 1909, but was widowed in 1926, leaving her to raise five children on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. For several summers Muriel, her children, and the family dog set off in a twenty-five foot motorboat, the Caprice, to explore the waters between Vancouver Island and the rugged Canadian mainland. They were on their own, with Muriel as captain, anchoring in secluded coves to tramp the wilderness, examining architecture and burial grounds in deserted native villages, and meeting the region's various human and animal inhabitants.

Muriel wrote about their journeys, and was successful in having articles published in magazines such as Blackwood's and Atlantic Monthly. In 1962, the year Muriel died, Blackwood and Sons of Edinburgh, Scotland published The Curve in Time, which described several summers of the family explorations. In 1968, Gray Publishing in Canada printed a second edition of The Curve in Time, and since then it has earned a reputation as a Canadian classic.