Arthur William ("Bill") Mayse (1912-1992) "spent his teens in gritty Nanaimo and grittier east side Vancouver. He knew Cowichan shamans, Sointula pukka fighters, tame apes from the A-frame camps, Chinese labourers, unrepentant Wobblies. More than anything, he knew and loved the country. He lived it, breathed it, fished it and sometimes despaired at what was being done to it in the ignorant clamour called progress. He was an ace reporter for The Province from the day he was hired out of UBC, a prize-winning poet one course short of graduation. He left to cover labour and politics for the rowdy Sun, then with his bride Win went to Toronto where he became fiction editor for Maclean's. He later joined the Victoria Times to write a warm column. It ran for thirty years." (Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun)

Mayse wrote many published stories and articles, several scripts for television's The Beachcombers, and four novels: Perilous Passage, The Desperate Search, Morgan's Mountain and Handliner's Island.

"No one has written more about this coast more often, and more knowingly (I want to say wisely, too) than has Arthur Mayse."
-Charles Lillard