Born in Tracadie, Nova Scotia, in 1884, Mary Loretta Weekes (nee Gerin) trained as a nurse at Boston City Hospital in 1910. She served briefly at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital before moving to Regina with her husband in 1914. Following the birth of the first of three sons, she turned her hand to writing short stories. Her interview with Norbert Welsh in 1931 led to the book The Last Buffalo Hunter (1939), and her interview with William Cornwallis King in 1936 culminated in Trader King. Weekes's other books include Round Council Fires, Painted Arrows, and Great Chiefs and Mighty Hunters. Mary Weekes died in 1980.