Jack Miner grew up near the shores of Lake Erie in proximity to both the industrial complex of Detroit-Windsor and one of North America’s great bird migration fly-ways. He was an avid hunter, but the relentless development of the region, the declining quality of the Great Lakes, and the threat of wildlife extermination converted Jack Miner, trapper and market hunter, into Jack Miner, conservationist and world wildlife spokesperson. Not unlike con-verted big-game hunters in Africa, Miner awakened to the crisis slowly but then threw himself with religious zeal into the protection of wildlife.
 

Jack Miner first began tagging waterfowl in 1909. Here, in 1915, he releases the first goose with a biblical verse inscribed on the band. [Photo, courtesy The Jack Miner Foundation]

Born John Thomas Miner at Dover Centre (Westlake), Ohio, on April 10, 1865, he moved with his family to Kingsville, Essex County, in southwestern Ontario in 1878 and soon bonded with the land as a consummate hunter. He hunted for fun and profit, his friends and relations marvelling at his natural instinct and energy in the bush. His affinity with the wild and his sense of sight, smell, and direction led to his being credited in his lifetime with the finding of thirteen people who had been lost in the forest.

In 1888 he married Laona Wigle and subsequently fathered four sons and a daughter. Then, at the turn of the century, a series of tragedies occurred: his daughter died suddenly in 1897 and, on an autumn moose-hunting trip to Quebec in 1898, his brother Ted died in a tragic accident. By 1900 Jack had learned to read, had discovered the Bible, and had experienced a religious conversion; in these life crises he began to interpret the biblical pronouncement, "Let man have dominion over all," as being a call for responsibility and stewardship, not exploitation and subjugation of nature. In 1904, his faith was put to a test when his oldest son Carl died suddenly at age thirteen. He tried to overcome tremendous grief through his conservation efforts.

Both the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways converged near the family brickyard in Kingsville, ten miles from the now famous Point Pelée which Miner helped designate a National Park in 1918. The plight of birds became a focus for his attention, especially cis a result of the extinction of the passenger pigeon (last recorded in Canada in 1902). After Miner purchased seven pinioned geese from a local trapper and in 1904 flooded one of the brickyard pits, he attracted Canada geese to his property. Soon he was feeding migrating flocks of geese, ducks, doves, and songbirds in a series of artificial ponds and was on his way to becoming "Wild Goose Jack," a worldwide symbol of conservation efforts.

In 1904 the Kingsville site was one of the first bird sanctuaries in North America. In August 1909, Miner tagged his first wild duck with a hand stamped aluminum band. The band was recovered five months later by Dr. W. Bray of Anderson, South Carolina (the first complete banding record). Data from thousands of subsequent taggings over the next six years was instrumental in the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1916 between Canada and the U.S. In 1915, with a flash of inspiration, he added a short verse of biblical scripture to his duck and goose bands. This was his unique way of passing on God's promises to those who recovered the bands.

Jack Miner's reputation grew and he became a much sought out lecturer on conservation and on his methods of banding, research, and habitat preservation. He spoke across the North American continent, wrote two books on the subject, in 1929 was awarded the outdoor gold medal in the U.S. and in 1943, a year before his death, an O.B.E. for "the greatest achievement in conservation in the British Empire." In 1931 he organized the lack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation which was incorporated as a philanthropic body in both the U.S. and Canada. The lack Miner League, similar to the Izaak Walton League, spread across Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. He took to the radio waves in support of junior bird clubs, encouraging children to build bird boxes for a wide variety of songbirds. His prophetic concerns over the condition of the Great Lakes, voiced as early as 1927, warned of future battles for the environment well before this became an international and political concern.  When National Wildlife Week was created in his honour, it was to a deserving pioneer of conservation who offered practical advice in a relative vacuum of scientific information on the relationship of birds and animals to their environment.  Jack Miner had the instinct for preservation.

Larry Turner