Reindeer Botanist

de Wendy Dathan

"One of Canada's most remarkable botanists, Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977) grew up on the Arctic Station in West Greenland, where he later served as Vice/Acting Canadian Consul (1940-43). For nearly twenty years, he studied reindeer activities in Alaska and the Northwest Territories as part of a Canadian project designed to encourage grazing animal husbandry among aboriginal peoples. As Curator of Botany at the National Museum of Canada, he collected thousands of specimens, greatly enlarging the National Herbarium and making it a superb research centre. Porsild's meticulous work and observations have particular relevance today with the growing concern over global warming in the Arctic. This long-awaited biography traces the challenging and adventurous career of an unusual, little-known scientist who battled rivalry, bureaucracy, personal disappointment, and private tragedy. In the end, he earned universal respect for his prodigious publications and intimate knowledge of the people, plants, and land around Canada's Arctic Circle. His story gives the first full account of the Canadian Reindeer Project and Canada's Consulate in wartime Greenland and describes the exploration and mapping of the Canadian flora and growth of the National Herbarium from about 1920 to Porsild's retirement in 1967."--