Maurice Hall Haycock fell in love with the Canadian Arctic in 1926-27 during a year spent in Pangnirtung and the Cumberland Sound area of Baffin Island. He went there to assist in mapping a region of 15,000 square miles of the interior of Baffin Island for the Geological Survey of Canada to help stake Canada's sovereignty of the Arctic.

He lived with the Inuit, learned Inuktitut, journeyed by dog team, survived off the land and came back south to earn his PhD in Economic Geology at Princeton University.

Maurice began painting in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia in the early 1930's. Following a visit to Great Bear Lake in 1949 with his painting partner, A. Y. Jackson, he traveled and painted extensively across the north of this continent virtually every year till his death in 1988.

In 39 years of Arctic painting he logged over 300,000 miles (500,000 km) from Alaska to Greenland and from the North Pole to the Barrenlands, traveling by Cessna, Otter, helicopter, ice breaker, zodiac and small boat, tracked vehicle, snowmobile, dog sled and on foot across tundra, sea, ice and by air, all with no roads.

Maurice's paintings tell a story geological vastness and beauty, peace, challenge, Inuit life, historical European exploration, and white man's impact. No other artist has painted so extensively, on so many locations, or with such sensitive feeling combined with faithful and vibrant interpretation of the landscape.