Brad was raised in a small town in Manitoba. His parents enjoyed camping and took him and his sister camping numerous times each year. This was the beginning of his love for the outdoors. When he was at home he loved riding his bike to the outskirts of town to the dyke system to play near the water catching frogs, guarder snakes and shooting his pellet gun.
 His father was skilled at woodworking and metal working and taught him a lot of basic skills. Much to his parents dismay he used the skills they had taught him to take apart every toy he had in order to see how they worked.  Then he would put them back together in different ways to make new toys.  He still feels a need to build everything himself.

After Brad graduated from high school he moved to the West coast and discovered the joys of canoeing, hiking, fishing, and exploring caves. These adventures only served to increase his love for the outdoors.

After a few years on the coast he returned to Manitoba where he married a beautiful girl named Helen. He spent the next year studying drafting at college and graduated with a degree in machine drafting. At that time the economy was poor in the prairies, so he and Helen moved back to the West Coast where  they both worked as finish carpenters. They worked like dogs all week, but when Friday came they went camping for the weekend.  After two years they decided to move back to the prairies where they grew up. They bought a character home in a small community in Manitoba and started a family.

Brad found employment with a small manufacturing company.  Starting at the bottom he worked his way up to drafting, then designing all of the company's products and eventually becoming General Manager of the company. He managed the company for 5 years. After 5 years he decided it was time to take a break from the stresses of managing what had grown into a fairly large company and do some thinking about what else he might like to do with his future.  At this point the idea of living off the land somewhere in the bush and reducing life to its basics seemed very appealing.  Of course, doing this with a wife and school-age children was not quite so simple.  And yet, the idea of doing something where he could further explore his love of the oudoors kept coming back to his mind.  One day after watching a few episodes of survival shows on TV he thought to himself, "Hey, I could do better than that!".  And thus an idea was born.  Would it REALLY be possible to survive in the wilderness with nothing?  And who would be crazy enough to do it with him?  He knew full well that his wife was not about to let him just wander into the wilderness by himself.  Lucky for him, he had a few crazy friends and one of them, Sean, was just the right partner to help him pull it off.  Sean and Brad knew each other from several fishing and hunting trips they had been on together and when Brad approached him with this idea Sean said, "Let's do it!".  They did some brainstorming and came up with the Bare Wilderness plan.  Surviving in the wilderness for 30 days with no gear except a knife - no food, no water, no supplies.  They have both spent time in the outdoors but never without any gear and know very little about actual survival.