Born in 1937, Arnold McCombs began working at his father's logging camp on Harrison Lake at age eleven. He continued working for the Eagle Creek Logging company during subsequent summers. He graduated as a Forest Engineer from the University of British Columbia in 1960 and received his MBA in 1967. He has worked in eastern Canada, Indonesia and Africa. McCombs has co-written and co-published two illustrated histories of logging with Wilfrid 'Curley' Chittenden. First they collaborated on The Harrison-Chehalis Challenge (Treeline Publishing, 1988), a history of the forest industry around Harrison Lake and the Chehalis Valley. It was followed by The Fraser Valley Challenge (Treeline Publishing, 1990), a history of logging and sawmilling in the Fraser Valley. A retired forestry engineer, McCombs was also an Agassiz-Harrison alderman.

[BCBW 2003] "Forestry"