Born in Vancouver in 1916, John Alfred Charters gathered his Castlegar News columns over 30 years into a collection, Over My Shoulder (Robson B.C.: Bear Grass Press, 1988). Decorated in World War II, he moved to the Kootenays in 1947 to teach school. He lived beside the Columbia River in Castlegar. He later became an oblate with the Benedictine abbey of St. Joseph of Westminster.

[BCBW 2003] "Journalism"