He was told he was simply found ambling around in one of the family’s many apple orchards “some years ago,” where he apparently manifested out of the ether; but at the age of seven or eight, after some late nights crunching numbers and possibly through some informative acquaintances, Harrison learned that he was most probably brought to the world in the most usual way and was born in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia in 1978, raised on the family’s 450 acre apple farm in the small rural community of Pereaux, where the Valley meets the Minas Basin.

Living much of his youth on a winding dirt road, with his parents Bob and Marianne, his two sisters Heidi and Kimberly, and his brother Rob; he often socialized in his younger days with the litter of boys that lived a bit further down the road. Harrison worked hard on the family farm growing up, learning the mechanics of farm life and about how often machinery broke down and the proper names to call them when they did so. He often supplemented his income by picking old beer bottles out of ditches; when really stuck for a good topic of conversation he still can be heard to ramble on about how in the spring was always the best. Harrison’s interests are in the environment and Renewable Energy Resources and he has had some schooling. In his eighteenth year, claiming to have nothing better to do, he attended Mount Allison University in New Brunswick to be an Engineer with dreams of perpetual motion machines and vehicles that flew, in his head. Two years later he came back to the farm to think, having graduated with an Engineering certificate, a head filled with things like office air-duct designs, and a lifetime subscription of university donation solicitations.

He took time from studies and worked on the farm, performed the Canadian equivalent of the grand tour by driving out west in a record three days to work, only eventually to return to the farm once again. One afternoon, the following year, two days before classes were to start for another Fall term, Harrison found himself circling a field on a tractor in the lee of the North Mountain, thinking of nothing worth mentioning, when suddenly he was seized by an almost frenzied panic, with the notion that he was a small fish in an infinitely large pond and it seemed as though the mountain was falling down on him. Harrison ran (though some say sprinted) to the nearest institute of learning, Acadia University, where he signed up for classes and obtained a BSc in Physics, minoring in Math, over the next two years, and while there topped it off with a B.A. in English, mostly to help with the crossword puzzle in the daily paper.

Harrison is now working on a post-graduate degree in Plant Science at Dalhousie University/NSAC; he still works at the Kentville Research Station as a Research Affiliate and can still often be found, circling a field in the lee of the North Mountain, trying hard not to think at all, which is when he does his best thinking.