David Stanley is a pioneering travel writer and longtime resident of Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Known for his adventurous spirit and deep curiosity about the world, David authored some of the earliest and most trusted guidebooks to the South Pacific, Micronesia, Eastern Europe, and Cuba, helping generations of travelers explore the globe with confidence and cultural sensitivity.

Born in Ontario, Stanley’s passion for travel began in his youth and blossomed into a lifelong vocation. Beginning with a trip to Mexico in 1965 he traveled to almost every country in the world. In the late 1960s he spent a year in several small towns near Guanajuato before attending the universities of Barcelona and Florence. His studies culminated in an honors degree (with distinction) in Spanish literature from the University of Guelph, Canada.

Between 1974 and 1979 he spent the winters working in Cuba as the representative of a Toronto tour company. In the off seasons he traveled through Asia. There he connected with Bill Dalton, author of the legendary Indonesia Handbook, and in 1979 David and Bill became co-authors of South Pacific Handbook, a guide to everything from Easter Island to the Solomons. Over the next quarter century David went on to write another seven editions of the handbook single-handed.

Stanley also wrote for Lonely Planet, producing the first three editions of Eastern Europe on a Shoestring, the first two editions of Lonely Planet Cuba, and the first edition of Canada's Maritime Provinces. His guidebooks were celebrated for their meticulous research and practical advice. He was a trailblazer in independent travel writing, often venturing to remote islands and lesser-known destinations long before they appeared on mainstream itineraries.

Stanley's policy while on the road was never to disclose that he was researching a guidebook and one of the hardest things was to maintain anonymity while asking a lot of questions. He always tried to tell it as it is and he never accepted freebies. His writing catered to low budget readers, without impacting negatively on the areas he was covering. For example, he deliberately left out some small isolated communities if he felt that introducing tourists to those areas would be detrimental.

In 2011 David wrote the final editions of Moon Tahiti and Moon Fiji before retiring from guidebook writing. It had become hard to compete with the unverified free information available on the internet and by then his royalties barely covered taxes and expenses. Since retirement he has spent his time traveling to locations he never had the time to visit. Well over a million copies of his books were sold over the years. His legacy lives on in the pages of his books and in the countless journeys he inspired.