Donald Murray is a Canadian writer, born in Lachine, Quebec, and educated there before acquiring a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick in 1977, honouring in Canadian Studies. After working for a few years in a Yukon mine and engaging in various union activities (and a couple of wildcat strikes), he procured a law degree from Dalhousie University at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1984. He has practiced law since, concentrating on providing criminal defence, human rights, and aboriginal legal support services.

Don was fortunate to have been immersed during his formative years in a Montreal environment that spanned the Rocket, Beliveau, and Lafleur eras of hockey's Canadiens, Before he had turned 23, he had been alive for 16 Stanley Cup wins. The leaner 1980s, 1990s, and since have compelled Donald to explore and understand that earlier tradition, perhaps habit, of winning. His Howie Morenz book is one of the products of his effort to reach back through history and to understand the Canadiens, and hockey, and sport in general as a cultural phenomenon.

Equipped with the cultural research background acquired at Mount Allison, and the factual analytical discipline achieved through both his legal studies and more than a few decades of legal practice and courtroom advocacy, he has been able to re-construct a reliable account of the hockey season when Howie Morenz definitively established his own contribution to the enduring character and mystique of the Canadien hockey club. By rigorously testing anecdotal accounts against actual game reports, and measuring conclusions in light of trustworthy collateral sources, Murray has been able to fill gaps in the historical record of Morenz's athletic achievements, and identify new understandings of how Morenz proposed, and contributed to, how the professional game could be played. Murray's research shows that Morenz's legacy as a professional athlete is less dependent on statistical achievements (though he had those) than on game after game performances that would engage and challenge the imaginations of his audiences.