Early life The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in the town of
Haileybury, Ontario. He became a freelance writer shortly after high school. He and his family moved to
Whitby, Ontario, in 1936. This period is described in his 1975 book
A Kid in Haileybury.
Journalist As a young man he worked in
Sudbury, Ontario, as a newspaper reporter, then for a weekly paper in Toronto, before taking a job at the
Springfield Republican newspaper in
Springfield, Massachusetts.
Stratemeyer Syndicate While in the U.S., he replied to a want ad placed by the
Stratemeyer Syndicate, publisher of such titles as
Tom Swift and the
Bobbsey Twins. As a result, he freelanced in 1926 and 1927 as one of the authors using the pseudonym
Roy Rockwood to write seven of the
Dave Fearless serialized mystery novels.
The Hardy Boys This led to his involvement with the
Hardy Boys, a project on which he was a large contributor, writing 19 of the first 25 books between 1927 and 1946, and 21 overall. He also wrote books in several other juvenile series, published in pulp magazines, novellas or novels over his fifty-year career, at one point writing six novels in one year. McFarlane earned as little as $85 per book during the
Great Depression, yet he continued because he had a growing family. which the Syndicate also used for the
Nancy Drew series of books.
Authorship of The Phantom Freighter Although there are claims that his last
Hardy Boys book,
The Phantom Freighter, was actually written by his wife Amy, his biographer
Marilyn Greenwald concluded that this was unlikely. In his 1976 autobiography
Ghost of the Hardy Boys, McFarlane says that
The Phantom Freighter "was written in 1946 in motel rooms at night on a location in Nova Scotia when I was directing a film".
Film and television work While still writing for the series for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, McFarlane returned to Canada to work for the
National Film Board of Canada (NFB). As part of the NFB in
Montreal, he wrote and directed documentaries and short dramas including the 1951 documentary
Royal Journey, as well as ''Here's Hockey
, a 1953 documentary about ice hockey featuring Montreal Canadiens star Jean Béliveau. He also wrote the documentary titled Herring Hunt'', nominated for an
Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. Moving to Toronto he wrote for
CBC television and at the suggestion of his friend
Lorne Greene. == Legacy ==