Peter Scott was born in Chilliwack in 1956 and raised in Sardis. He grew up in the shadow of the Chilliwack Cascade Mountains, where he spent much of his youth hiking, camping, sketching and painting.

In 1977, he entered the faculty of education at the University of British Columbia and majored in art with a minor in geography. Peter studied art under the mentorship of the prominent Canadian painter Gordon Appelbe Smith, who helped Peter refine his impressionist style of landscape painting.

In 1978, the Chilliwack Search and Rescue, under the leadership of local mountaineer Neil Grainger and in partnership with the local RCMP detachment, applied for and received a government grant to fund a project that would update all the Forest Service maps of the Chilliwack River Valley. Peter was hired as project manager, and for two summers he and his crews slashed routes to remote areas and built and repaired, surveyed, marked and mapped popular hiking trails throughout the Cheam Range and mountains of that area. The inspiration for his artwork came from the glaciers, forests, and mountains of that region.

In 1983, Peter relocated to Quesnel, B.C., where he began a 30-year career as a secondary school art educator. Peter also spent these years raising a family, coaching a variety of sports, camping, hiking, canoeing and painting vistas of the beautiful Cariboo region of British Columbia.

In 2012, Peter relocated to Osoyoos, in Canada’s only desert, and