Roly Huebsch was born in England in 1938 and grew up on the Isle of Wight with his grandparents, the poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson and his wife. As a teenager he moved to Canada to join his family and after high school and a brief stint in the RCAF he joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a sound technician with the television service. He spent his working life in television sound, both with the CBC and as a freelance, working on everything from Grand Opera to soap opera – Olympic games to children's programming. He always drew and painted in his spare time, but it was only after retirement that he actually exhibited and sold any of his pictures