Canadian writer/filmmaker Heather Cook is best known for beautifully crafted documentary films broadcast on the CBC program, The Nature of Things. Her memoir about 1960's France, Pictures from a Darkroom Floor: my life in France, comes out in September, 2013.

Born Heather Maggs in Montreal in 1935,  she is the sister of Canadian artist Arnaud Maggs and school principal Derek Maggs, and the mother of guitarist/composer Jesse Cook and labour lawyer Hilary Cook. She lives in Toronto.

Cook earned her BA from Bishop's University in 1956.  She worked as a newspaper reporter and had a daily radio show in Cornwall, Ontario before moving to Europe in 1959, where she lived for the next decade, mostly in France. She worked as a journalist in the UK and France and joined The Nature of Things program in 1969, where she planned, produced and directed award-winning documentaries until 1997.  Since then she has been writing works of non-fiction.