He lived a traditional Inuit lifestyle until 1961, when he settled in Cape Dorset because of declining health and a hunting accident.

[1] Parr was born in 1893 on Southern Baffin Island, near Cape Dorset, Northwest Territories which is now Nunavut.

[3] In Cape Dorset, Parr began to draw and make stonecut relief prints.

These are mainly images of hunting scenes, although Shamanic subjects are also depicted.

[4] His drawings depict the shift in lifestyle between the semi-nomadic and the institutional.