Born in Brooklyn, New York to Canadian parents, Wavell Cowan then spent an idyllic childhood in a paper-mill town in northern Quebec. High school and college years in Montreal led to a degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University. A summer on a showboat on the Ohio River performing before audiences from Cincinnati to Louisville preceded doctoral studies in Appleton, Wisconsin. This led to a career as an independent pulp and paper scientist, developing process equipment and test instruments now in pulp and paper mills worldwide.  The historical record suggests that paper was "invented" in 105 CE by Cai Lun, an official serving at the Chinese imperial court of that time. This is undoubtedly a myth. Nature has been fortuitously creating paper ever since cellulose became the essential component of plant life. Rotting plants isolate the more resistant cellulose fibers. Occasional flooding carries such fibers into rivers where rapids and waterfalls wash them clean, and aeration causes them to cluster in mats.

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