John Hellawell Calam was born in 1925 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. He emigrated to Canada in 1939. After attending Burnaby South High School, he enlisted as a navigator in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and later earned a BA and did teacher training at UBC. During his teaching and academic career, Calam spent time in rural British Columbia in communities such as Forest Grove, Telkwa, Kitimat, Montreal, New York City, and Vancouver. He worked as a teacher and high school principal; was a graduate and doctoral student at both McGill and Columbia; served as editor with UBC Press and Pacific Educational Press; and was a professor of Social and Educational Studies and head of the Secondary Education Division, in the UBC Faculty of Education, where he was also associate dean and emeritus professor. As a researcher of the history of education, he edited Alex Lord's British Columbia – Recollections of a Rural School Inspector, 1915-1936 (1991). He wrote Affecting Eternity: Origins of the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education (2007). He was also an accomplished writer, poet, musician, rock hound, kite flyer, and handyman/craftsman. Calam and his wife Renee also enjoyed travelling, especially around British Columbia and Yukon. They eventually retired to Salt Spring Island, where Calam continued to write, publish, and mentor students and colleagues. They moved to the Comox Valley in 2016, where he died two years later.