Raymond Griffin

A retired architect, Raymond Griffin was born in Vancouver, B.C., and lived there most of his life. When Raymond was two years old, his family moved to the village of Boston Bar, in the Fraser Canyon, where his father was hired as a Canadian Pacific Railway guard during World War II. At the end of the war, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Coquitlam B.C.Ray attended Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School, and Como Lake Secondary School, in Coquitlam. He later graduated in...See more

A retired architect, Raymond Griffin was born in Vancouver, B.C., and lived there most of his life. When Raymond was two years old, his family moved to the village of Boston Bar, in the Fraser Canyon, where his father was hired as a Canadian Pacific Railway guard during World War II. At the end of the war, when he was seven years old, his family moved to Coquitlam B.C.Ray attended Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School, and Como Lake Secondary School, in Coquitlam. He later graduated in Architecture from the University of British Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania. Upon graduation, Ray worked as an architect in Philadelphia before returning to Vancouver. During his fifty years of architectural practice, he has designed many significant buildings in B.C.In his 20s, Ray married a girl from Scotland, Marion Hamilton, and they had four sons. When it was Ray's turn to read them bedtime stories, he tired of reading them standard nursery rhymes and began to substitute his own stories, which the boys much preferred. They remembered the stories when they became parents, and told versions of them to their own children.Ray is a private pilot, and enjoys curling and lawn bowling, and watching his grandchildren develop. Now that he is a grandfather, he has recorded these stories so that his sons and their children can read about the time when he was a child too.ILLUSTRATOR: LJILJANA MAJKICWatching her father sketch nostalgic scenes and sometimes comical characters in his spare time, sparked the love of drawing in Ljiljana as a child. Before moving to Canada in 2007, she attended classical drawing and painting classes at a fine arts studio in Belgrade, Serbia, which greatly influenced her style. She creates expressive, character driven, strong narratives through multiple mediums, particularly enjoying the spontaneity and unpredictability of ink and watercolour. Sharpening her digital skills over the last decade, brought her into the realm of design and illustration. She received a diploma in Electronic Media Design at Langara College and since then, has worked as a graphic designer and illustrator in Vancouver. See less