Despite the fact that Al had been ailing for months with lung cancer, his death came as a surprise. He'd been a staple of the literary landscape for so long—ever since The Cariboo Horses won the first of his two Governor General's Awards in 1965--that his constant stream of poetry appeared set to continue indefinitely. But despite his lengthy career and widespread recognition, there was very little known about Al Purdy's medical history. We do know that he was diagnosed with cancer of the lungs in early 2001 and given six months to live. He apparently never recovered from this initial illness and was back on tour with his poetry collection In Trouble Again when he died on August 5th, 2003. At the time of his death, he was still working on a new collection of poems. Al Purdy was a true Canadian poet. A native of Northern Ontario, he spent most of his life living in or around Toronto. For many years, he worked as a copy editor at the CBC radio network but he also wrote freelance articles and reviews for a number of publications including The Globe and Mail and The National Post. His work has been published in several collections over the course of his career and has won him several awards including the 2002 Rea Award for Literary Merit in Poetry from the Royal Society of Canada.