Bertram Richard Brooker was a Canadian writer, painter, musician and advertising agency executive. Born in England he moved to Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1905 with his family. He moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1921 and joined the staff of Marketing magazine. Brooker served as the magazine's editor and publisher from 1924 until 1926. In 1923, he published his first book, Subconscious Selling. In 1931 Brooker was embroiled in a controversy about nudity in art when a painting of his was removed from a gallery exhibition because it contained nudity. Brooker wrote the essay "Nudes and Prudes" as a rebuke. In 1936, Brooker's novel Think of the Earth became the first work to win the Governor General's Award for Fiction. Brooker is regarded as the first Canadian abstract impressionist painter. He was strongly influenced in his development as an artist by LeMoine Fitzgerald.