"The first poet in Canada to use real factual things unadorned by metaphor," critic Peter Stevens has called W. W. E. Ross. Ross was born in Peterborough, Ontario, on 14 June 1894 to Ralph and Nellie Creighton Ross. He grew up in Pembroke, Ontario, and earned a degree in chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1914. His interest in the natural world took him on two surveying trips in the summers of 1912 and 1913, both to northern Ontario wilderness regions--Algonquin and Algoma--later made famous by the paintings of the Group of Seven. He served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I as a private in the signal corps. On his return, he took up lifelong employment as a geophysicist at the Dominion Magnetic Observatory at Agincourt, Ontario, a few miles north of Toronto. He married Mary Lowrey on 3 June 1924, and they had two children. Mary Loretto and Nancy Helen...