Jim Monger was born in England in 1937 and received his geological education at the University of Reading and the University of Kansas, where he met his wife, Jackie. He then obtained his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1966. He joined the Vancouver office of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) in 1965, remained there until 1995, and currently is an emeritus scientist of the GSC and teaches part-time at Simon Fraser University. With the GSC, he studied the stratigraphy of late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic rocks in the western Cordillera and did regional mapping in southwestern British Columbia. Beginning in the early 1970s, following the emergence of plate tectonic concepts, he has attempted to unravel and explain the tectonic evolution of the Cordillera.