Bertram Brooker.

Writer. Bertram Brooker was born March 31, 1888, in Croydon, England, to Richard Brooker and Ann (Skinner) Brooker. He and his family remained in Croydon until 1905, when the Brookers relocated to Portage-la-Prairie, in the province Manitoba in Canada, when Bertram was seventeen years old. When he finished with school, Brooker sought work to help support his family. He laid track for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and quickly was promoted to an office clerk job within the company. After working with the railroad for six years, Brooker pursued his interests in motion pictures and the entertainment industry. By 1911 he and one of his brothers had formed a partnership and purchased a movie theater in Neepawa, Manitoba. Surrounded by movies, Brooker decided to try writing his own. Once satisfied with his screenplays, he contacted American movie studios and sold several of his scripts to Vitagraph. Encouraged by his sudden success, Brooker attempted other ventures in literature and journalism, and by 1914 became the editor of the Portage-la-Prairie publication The Review. He met and married Mary Aurilla Porter in 1913, and they had three children: Victor, Doreen, and Phyllis. He was called into service in the Royal Canadian Engineers during World War I, and in the years following the war he worked for several newspapers, including The Telegram and The Free Press. During this time, Brooker also began working in the advertising industry. By 1921 he had moved to Toronto, fused his journalism and advertising experience, and began his career as the editor of Marketing, an advertising trade journal. Through his editing work he began to develop an interest in design, which led to relationships with key visual and graphic artists in Toronto. These relationships resulted in the publication of three how-to books on graphic design and the advertising industry.