Pat Wastell Norris grew up at her familys sawmill in Telegraph Cove, on eastern Vancouver Island. She started work early as mate, deckhand and engineer aboard her fathers tugboat, who skippered the mill towboat around Johnstone Strait. Norris eventually published memoirs of her youth in Raincoast Chronicles 16: Time and Tide: A History of Telegraph Cove (Harbour 1995). Retired and seeking another book project, Norris spent three years tracking down Island Tug crewmen for interviews to write the history of coastal tugboats in High Seas, High Risk: The Story of the Sudburys (Harbour 1999, 2005) and a retrospective appreciation of seine boats of the Alert Bay area in High Boats: A Century of Salmon Remembered (Harbour 2003).