Poverty stricken, cut off from friends and lost in Toronto he invented an "in rural dialect" poetry voice at local open mics which was made into a celebrated book of poetry and a movie, Scouts are Cancelled. While in Toronto Stiles befriended some of the local Toronto poets such as Paul Vermeersch and Adam Levin and Patrick Woodcock. Stiles now lives in London England and occasionally performs poems from Scouts are Cancelled. He has just published a second novel, Taking the Stairs, set in Toronto and the Annapolis Valley.