Allan Donaldson grew up in Woodstock, N.B.. As a child, he became well acquainted with the street life of the town. In his teens, he worked summers wheeling cement, tamping ties and laying steel on the railway, working on a rock crusher and an asphalt plant, and operating a jackhammer. On scholarships, he studied English literature at the University of New Brunswick and the University of London, and he spent a teaching career in the English Department at UNB. He is the author of a book of short stories, Paradise Siding.