[a] According to the writer Hal Pink in his book Bill Guppy: King of the Woodsmen, Guppy pursued a variety of occupations throughout his life: [H]e set out alone to earn his living as a boy fur-buyer at the age of fourteen, during half a century in the Northern Wild he had been in turn Indian trader, trapper, hunter, teamster, lumberjack, fire ranger, prospector, dog-driver, mail-runner, hunting guide, canoeman, packer, storekeeper, bush postmaster, and professional builder of log cabins.

[2]: 15 Giving his occupation as "Bushman", Guppy enlisted with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force on April 25, 1916, and served on the front line in the First World War.

Belaney had just arrived from Toronto, eager to begin the new life in the Canadian back-country that he had imagined as a boy growing up in Hastings, England.

Liking the young Englishman and admiring his pluck, Guppy invited him to live with his family and start learning the basic skills needed for life in the bush: traveling by canoe and snowshoes through the lakes and forests, trapping, hunting and axe craft, among others.

He had lived through it all - the hardship, the terrible cold, the scorching fire, the hunger of the meatless trail, the sweaty toil of the portage, the crossing of thin ice, soaking in snow water, pain of frost-bitten limbs, the toilsome life of the canoe and the paddle, the axe and the tumpline, the empty stomach and the smoky tea - lived through every inch of it for a quarter of a century before ever he spoke of it or wrote it down.