J. Robert Whittle was born in Yorkshire, England; the eldest son of 10 children. An entrepreneur from an early age, he wasn't to know that this was merely preparing him for a much later writing career. He played professional cricket while attending Leeds University and became a mining engineer leading a first-response-to-disaster team for 12 years for the British Coal Board. By 1963, following several serious mine accidents in Europe, Whittle moved to Australia and finally to Canada where he would meet his second wife, Joyce Sandilands. While recuperating from a knee surgery and infection (199...