Bill died on Oct. 6, 2023. Born and raised in Toronto, Bill entered the workforce in sales, taking a job with General Electric and settling in Syracuse, N.Y., where he remained until retirement. Highlights of his career include travelling to Korea, Taiwan, Ecuador, Israel and Europe to service clients such as the U.S. Air Force, NATO and other international air forces.

Based in Brooklyn, N.S., Avard has been photographing people and places for nearly 40 years. His social landscape photographs capture moments frozen in time, often reminiscent of a bygone era. Avard’s work was shown in Toronto for the Contact Photography Festival, featuring around 250 digital images from his archives collections. He had a solo exhibit at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax titled “Toronto Now and Then” and is working on a new self-published book of street photos from the 1980s called The Torontonians, an homage to Robert Frank’s 1959 book, The Americans.