Brion Gysin，Born to Canadian parents during the First World War - his father died at the Battle of the Somme. In 1921 settled in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada with his mother. Became an artist in the late 1930s and a writer in the 1940s. Became well know for a surreal style of art, and with William S. Burroughs devises the style of writing known as "cut-ups.