[1] Born in Portsmouth, England, Lawrence immigrated as a child with his family to Québec in the mid-1960s, during an era of intense anti-English sentiment in that Province.

To cope with the social rejection from his Francophone classmates, Lawrence turned to reading and writing comics for both entertainment and as a tool for improving his French language literacy.

[7] From this, Lawrence subsequently won a grant from the Xeric Foundation in 2000 [8] which he used to help publish Drippytown Comics,[9] an anthology series which grew out from the Gazette and served to showcase the work of each contributing artist.

The book was named on the American Library Association's Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens[11] and won the Doug Wright Award in 2008.

In 2014, Lawrence re-purposed his character Drippy the Newsboy as the protagonist for a comic book trilogy based on the writings of American author Stephen Crane.