Fee Hellmen was born Ernest Fridolf Hellmen in 1918 at Wardner, B.C. He attended school and resided there until 1933. He married Alta Mae Goodwin and they had a family of four children. Fee and his family have lived throughout the Kootenay valley from Edgewater to a logging camp in Gold Creek. Fee worked for 20 years in the lumbering industry in East Kootenay, falling with a crosscut saw and loading boxcars with lumber. He was known as an expert saw filer, and would make extra money in camp sharpening saws for other fallers after supper. Fee worked for 13 years at the Farmers' Coop Store in Cranbrook, the last three as a manager of the store. While working at the Coop, Fee also ran a guiding business. He started working on Jim White and Harry Bjorn's territory on Wild Horse Creek/Top of the World. He then bought his own territory, which encompassed all the area of Lamb Creek above Mineral Lake, Moyie above Lumberton, and Perry Creek above Old Town. He had a good business on this land, finally selling when the Coop told him to choose between guiding and working in the store, as they could no longer give him all fall off every year. He sold the territory to Wally Faiers for one thousand dollars. He was employed as a security guard at Fort Steele Heritage Town from 1975 to 1980 when he retired. From 1980 on, he wrote "From the Coals of My Campfire", a newspaper column for the Kootenay Advertiser. In 1990, he had "Kootenay Country – One Man’s Life in the Canadian Rockies" published.