Vic grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he was part of the Springfield Heights Mennonite Church until he got married to Kathy in the summer of 1979. Between 1975 and 1981, Vic studied at the Canadian Mennonite Bible College and the University of Manitoba. Both Vic and Kathy worked in Mennonite camps (not the same ones) during the summer of 1977. In the spring of 1978, Vic met Kathy on a cyclathon raising money for those camps.

After graduation in 1981, Vic and Kathy spent a year in Churchill, Manitoba, where the polar bears roam and where, for three months, it never got warmer than -35 degrees Celsius. There Vic began work on his first novel, The Sign of the Manipogo, which was completed in 1987 and published in 1991.

After the far north, it was time to move south to Elkhart, Indiana, where Vic studied at The Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries from 1982 to 1984, graduating with a Master of Divinity.

From 1985 to 1991, Vic and his brother, with the help of their wives, ran a small Anabaptist Bible school and study centre in south-eastern New Brunswick. Then it was off to Germany for a three-year MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) assignment. Vic worked with a German Mennonite church and as the director of the Military Counseling Network, helping American soldiers who no longer wished to be part of the military.

In 1994, the family returned to New Brunswick, where Vic continued working with MCC, doing mediation training and helping the New Brunswick government develop a victim-offender mediation program.

In February 1997, the family moved west again, this time to Edmonton, Alberta, where Vic was the director of the Welcome Home Community (a Mennonite social service agency working with young at-risk families) until the spring of 2002.

On August 1, 2002, Vic and his family moved to the London Mennonite Centre. Vic first visited the LMC for a week as a young backpacker in the spring of 1975, then again in 1978 and in 1993, and gained a growing appreciation for its work. Having felt drawn to the centre for many years, Vic is excited by this opportunity to contribute to the work of the LMC.

Vic is a film buff. He also enjoys reading theology and science fiction, walking, cross-country skiing and playing German board games.

He has also teamed up with his brother to provide a movie blog Vic and Walter Thiessen on Movies