It became a ritual. Each fall, John Macoun would return from western Canada and brief government officials about his latest discoveries. But 1881 was different. At the conclusion of his meeting with the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Macoun was named Dominion Botanist. The appointment was confirmed in a short private interview with the Prime Minister. At age 50, when most people of his generation contemplated retirement, Macoun had attained his life-long dream.

That John Macoun was named Canada’s first Dominion Botanist was a testament to his infectious energy and stubborn determination. Fatherless from the age of six, nineteen-year-old John had immigrated in 1850 from famine-riddled Northern Ireland to Canada West. While working in the fields and forests of backwoods Ontario, John took an interest in the local flora that rapidly evolved into a serious study of Canadian botany. Never satisfied as a farmer, he trained as a teacher so that he could devote every spare moment to his plants. He would take a new or unusual specimen, try to identify it using the few books at hand, and then add it to his ever-expanding private herbarium. This painstaking self-study, together with his exhaustive field work and growing correspondence with leading botanists in Great Britain and the United States, established his reputation as an expert on the local flora and resulted in his appointment, in 1868, as chair of natural history at Belleville’s Albert College.

The turning point in Macoun’s career came, however, during one of his summer collecting trips when he met, by coincidence, Sandford Fleming in the Owen Sound district in 1872. Fleming, Canadian Pacific Railway engineer-in-chief, was headed west to assess the proposed Yellowhead Pass route for the new transcontinental railway. He invited Macoun, or “the Professor” as he was popularly known, to come along. Over the next decade, during five separate exploratory surveys between 1872 and 1881, Macoun examined the farming potential of the prairies, concluding that all of the North-West, including the semi-arid southern plains, was an agricultural Eden. This endorsement of the region’s future dovetailed with Ottawa’s great expectations and made Macoun the darling of the government – hence his reward as Dominion Botanist.

Macoun tackled his duties with missionary zeal – so much so that, within six years, he was appointed Survey Naturalist. A confirmed anti-Darwinist, Macoun believed that a natural scientist should be a kind of jack-of-all-trades whose role was to assemble an inventory of God’s wondrous bounty. He spent as much time as possible in the field each season, gathering any living thing he chanced upon – plants, birds, mammals, fish, even insects – in the hope of discovering species new to science. Someone stumbling upon his campsite, with his day’s collection strewn about in various stages of preparation, might have mistaken it for a kind of devil’s workshop.
 

John Macoun was appointed chair of natural history when Albert College was founded in 1868 in Belleville, Ontario. An internationally renowned botanist, Macoun, who was self-taught, built up massive collections of flora and fauna from his 19th century trans-Canada excursions. By systematically classifying his specimens, he left a national botanical treasure for the study and speculation of future generations. [Photo, courtesy National Museums of Canada/Neg. No. 31874]

What drove Macoun during his 30-year career at the Survey, what kept him constantly on the move, despite his age, was a belief in the profound importance of his work to the young Dominion. He believed his duty was to provide practical information on Canada’s great resource heritage, information that could be used for development purposes. Whether examining the Yukon, the Alberta foothills, or remote Sable Island on the Atlantic, he always returned to Ottawa heavily laden with specimens. His enthusiasm for his work knew no bounds.

Macoun’s feverish pace came to an end in 1912 when he suffered a stroke. Retiring to Vancouver Island, he remained active, continuing to collect along the ocean when not completing his autobiography. When he died in 1920, in his ninetieth year, natural scientists around the world mourned the passing of the dean of Canadian naturalists.

Macoun’s career had a profound influence in the development of life sciences. Without his tenacity and drive, it is unlikely that the Geographical Survey of Canada would have engaged in natural history to the extent that it did. Thanks to his ability to apply his naturalist skills to practical ends, scientific research came to be regarded as a legitimate government-funded activity. Macoun’s wide-ranging field collections also figured in the early twentieth century. His natural history collection reached such proportions that the Canadian government found itself custodian of a “national collection.”

Macoun’s greatest legacy was as a field naturalist. He collected widely and thoroughly, usually labouring from dawn to dusk. Few obstacles deterred him. In the process, he developed an unrivalled knowledge of Canada’s natural life and could recognize new species at sight, many of which were named after him. What was perhaps most amazing was the range of territory he covered: he literally tramped tens of thousands of miles over all kinds of terrain. His collections, moreover, not only were the first extensive ones made in a particular area but, in many instances, were made before the natural environment was disturbed. John Macoun singlehandedly rolled back the natural history frontiers of Canada.

Bill Waiser