Leonard Budgell was born in 1917 in the remote Labrador settlement of North West River and grew up 80 miles to the east in Rigolet, where his father managed the Hudson's Bay Company trading post. Officially joining the Company himself in 1935, Len remained a "Servant of the Bay" until his retirement in 1982. He and his wife, Muriel, whom he met when she went to Labrador as a nurse, raised a family of four. Len Budgell died in 2000.