About the Author:

Donald E. Waite was born in Renfrew, Ontario, and was raised on a dairy farm before joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at age 19.  Upon completing his training, he was posted to Burnaby, New Westminster, and Maple Ridge before being transferred back to Ottawa for training in the Identification (photography and fingerprinting) Section.  During his seven-year stint in the force, he worked General Duty, Burglary Detail, and Narcotics.  During this period Waite become interested in photography and often assisted the Identification Section members on their investigations.  As a result he applied for and was accepted into the Identification Section.

Waite took discharge from teh RCMP in 1971 and returned to Maple Ridge to open a camera store and portrait studio.  It was during this period that he first became interested in local history and over the next several years wrote:  Fraser Valley Stories, 1972; The Fraser Canyon, 1974; The Cariboo Gold Rush, 1975; and, commissioned by the Municipality of Langley, The Langley Story, 1977.

In 1975 a store employee loaned Waite a book on bird photography by world-renowned bird photographer Eliot Porter titled Birds of North America: A Personal Selection.  Over several years Waite concentrated on photographing birds in flight with high-speed strobes and in 1984 co-authored The Art of Photographing North Amercican Birds with Isodor Jeklin of Toronto.  Galahad Books of New York City, Porter's publisher, took on this title.

In 1993 Waite began specializing in oblique or slanting ariel photography and pioneered the placing of his air photos on the Internet to advertise real estate to a world market.  He sold that business to a son in 2005.

Now living in retirement, Waite is pursuing two hobbies - photographing birds and sourcing out historical photographs on gold mining and espionage across North America and his own memiors for future publications.

He and his wife Tina have 5 grown children and 13 grandchildren.