Maurice Crosby was born in Miami, Fla and his family moved first to Newfoundland and then to Nova Scotia in 1930. Crosby left school in 1942 to join the United States Merchant Marine. During the next several years, he participated in the Sicilian campaign and the Murmansk run, and served in the Pacific. He began his career as a photographer by snapping pictures of a convoy in which he was taking part. In the 1960s he was selected by the Department of Trade & Industry in Ottawa as Nova Scotia’s representative to a Boston Gift Show to exhibit his photographs as examples of Nova Scotia’s creative output. In the early 1980s Crosby left the studio and became a photographer for the provincial government, retiring in the 1990s.