Glen Etling was born in Dauphin, Manitoba to William Etling and Elizabeth Etling (nee Reader) in 1908. He came to Melfort, Saskatchewan on a harvest excursion train in 1928, and homesteaded in the Choiceland district. Glen married Grace Patterson, who had grown up in the Willowdale district, on December 21, 1932. They would have five children. They moved to Le Pas in 1965, where he farmed. As the land when they arrived was heavy with willows, Glen was forced to be inventive; he made a homemade sawmill, a shingle mill, rotary and V-snow plows and root pickers. He retired in Melfort in 1976.