Keith McLaren is an award-winning author and retired mariner whose sea career spanned almost half a century. For the last twenty-five years he was employed as a shipmaster for British Columbia Ferry Services, retiring in 2016. In the mid-1970s, he sailed aboard the schooner Bluenose II out of Halifax. The experience inspired him to write his first book, Bluenose and Bluenose II. He also wrote Light on the Water, an exploration of historical photographs of the British Columbia Coast. His book A Race for Real Sailors won the 2006 Dartmouth Prize for Non-Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards as well as the Keith Matthews Award for Best Book of 2006 from the Canadian Nautical Research Society. In 2017, he was a recipient of the prestigious Maritime Museum of British Columbia Beaver Medal for Maritime Excellence. He currently lives in North Saanich, BC, on Vancouver Island where he spends much of his summer prawning from his Boston Whaler.