I was born in Sarospatak, Hungary to Holocaust survivors: my mother had been sent to Auschwitz; my father to a slave labor battalion. After the war my father resumed his activities as a wine merchant but weakened by his war-time ill treatment he died when I was four months old. Two months later the remnants of our family escaped Communist Hungary. After several years we made it to Montreal, Canada. There my mother remarried a fellow Hungarian. At five I learned to speak English. I attended Herzliah High School and subsequently McGill University (Chinese studies) and Magdalen College, Oxford (History of Ideas).

I remained in England for ten years working as a freelance writer and an editor in a publishing firm. On returning to Canada I continued to work as a freelance writer, receiving Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council awards for my work. I also became the Toronto editor of Cinema Canada magazine.  I decided that I would rather make films than write about them.  I worked as an independent documentary film producer for many years. I was eventually recruited by the National Film Board of Canada as their head of production. Subsequently, I was appointed the head of the National Film Board. Under my aegis, the NFB won numerous accolades including international Emmys and Oscars. I also inaugurated Canada’s first streaming service (in the same year as Netflix).

On retiring from the NFB I returned to my first love, writing. I also took up long-distance bicycling although with no experience of cycling. Over a six-year period from 2019 I spent close to three years on a bike. I cycled the length of Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, across the States from Los Angeles to Savannah, North America from the Arctic Ocean to the Panama Canal, South America from Cartagena in Columbia to Ushuaia at the southern tip of the continent, and then followed the Silk Road from Beijing to Istanbul.