Walter John Meyer zu Erpen was born in 1958 in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.
Following two years of college in Nanaimo and a year of French language studies at the University of Strasbourg, Walter completed his undergraduate degree in history and French (BA, 1982) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver. He completed his graduate degree in archival studies (MAS, 1985), also at UBC.
Establishment of the Psychical Research Archives Endowment Fund at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, was a logical continuation of research begun in the 1980s and published as “The Canadian Spiritualist Movement and Sources for its Study” (Archivaria 32, Summer 1990). The article was co-authored with Reverend Joy Lowe and edited by Walter’s friend and fellow archivist Debra Elaine Barr (1954-2008). The article raised concerns about the lack of any systematic means of preserving archives relating to Canadian Spiritualist organizations.