W.N. (Nick) Marach was born and raised in Wawa, Ontario, and studied architecture at the University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1968. After working for an architectural firm in Toronto, he travelled extensively by motorcycle in Europe and North Africa, before returning to Vancouver in 1972. That year he met his future wife, Veronica, and bought the T.K., an old, thirty-two-foot gillnetter. For the next decade, he fished each salmon season and worked as an architect at several Vancouver firms as time allowed. In 1982 Nick and his growing family moved to Yellowknife, where he took a job with the government of the Northwest Territories. He continued to fish during summer vacations spent in Vancouver. Nick sold his last gillnetter in 1990 and moved with his family back to the Lower Mainland in 1992. In 2001 he joined the City of Surrey as Manager of the Building Division and retired in 2011. Nick and Veronica have four grown children and one grandchild.