John (Jack) Vincent Canfield was born in Hazleton the eldest of four children, three boys and a girl. His father was a coal miner of Irish descent and his mother was the daughter of Tyrolean immigrants, a homemaker who supplemented the family income by taking in sewing, working in the knitting mills, and later, when the mines closed, working as a clerk in the local High-end dress store. Brought up Catholic, Jack went to the local public school, attending religious instruction on the weekend. School came easily and he was accelerated through the local school system, graduating at the age of 16. When he finished school he went to work in a local metal-working shop but was laid off after a short time and, with few jobs in Hazleton, went off to Washington DC to live with an Aunt and look for work.

He easily found employment in DC, working first at the Army Map Service and then at the Library of Congress. After saving some money he approached both Johns Hopkins and George Washington University to enrol as a student. GW accepted him and in September of 1954 he began his professional journey. The encouragement of his professors led to his focus on philosophy and, consequently, his acceptance at Brown University on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Later, Canfield was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his research in Germany.

At Brown he met his future wife Abby, an Art student from RISD. The family grew quickly, with three children under three by the time of his first teaching appointment in Colorado, and a fourth son adopted shortly after his return to the East Coast. Returning the to the East also marked the beginning of Canfield's spiritual involvement, which grew in significance as he continued his academic career with a position at Cornell University. In 1968, Canfield accepted a tenure track position at the University of Toronto in Toronto Canada and the family relocated to neighbour near the downtown campus. Canfield continued to teach and to be involved in a Zen practice, as a founding member of the Toronto Zen Centre and then as a member of the Springwater Centre (formerly the Genesee Valley Zen Centre).

Today Canfield lives in Toronto with his wife Sharon, the mother of his youngest daughter, where he continues to pursue his spiritual practice and to write.