Les Stroud (born 20 October 1961)[1][2][3] is a Canadian survival expert, filmmaker and musician best known as the creator, writer, producer, director, cameraman and host of the television series Survivorman.
After a short career behind the scenes in the music industry, Stroud became a full-time wilderness guide, survival instructor and musician based in Huntsville, Ontario.
The survival skills imparted from watching Stroud's television programs have been cited by several people as the reason they lived through harrowing wilderness ordeals.
[6] Stroud worked for several years at the Toronto-based music video channel MuchMusic, and as a songwriter for the band New Regime before a Temagami canoe trip sparked a career change.
Afterwards, the couple moved to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories where Stroud was employed as an outdoor instructor to special needs individuals of aboriginal descent.
[2] The success of these specials led to the development of Survivorman, a show that followed a similar format of leaving Stroud on his own, with minimal equipment, in the wilderness to videotape his survival experience.
They travelled to Goldsborough Lake (50°41′55″N 89°20′46″W / 50.69861°N 89.34611°W / 50.69861; -89.34611) deep in the Wabakimi, first building a tipi then an attached A-frame while using no metal, plastic, or otherwise manufactured tools.
For the first half of the year, they took a store of traditional foods such as wild rice, squash, beaver and moose meat, bear fat, and maple sugar.
In late September, Stroud's friends Doug Getgood and Fred Rowe brought in food for the next six months and chopped firewood for the couple.
Stroud and Jamison built and equipped a winter cabin using an axe, a modern bow saw, and a trapper's tin wood stove left by Getgood and Rowe, along with a metal pot they found.
[17] This instrument is featured prominently in his self-titled debut CD which has been described as "a collection of diverse roots/blues and traditional folk, acoustic music that reflects the uniquely northern spirit of freedom and adventure."