Mel D’Souza is a self-taught artist who was born in East Africa and went to school in his native Goa—a former Portuguese territory in India. In 1971, he emigrated to Canada with his wife and two daughters and settled in Brampton, Ontario. They spent their summer vacations travelling extensively by road across Canada and the United States, before “discovering” the island of Newfoundland in 1989. Since then, Mel has returned every year to visit as much of Newfoundland and Labrador as possible and now has his “second home” in Francois on the southwest coast.