David W.Schindler
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1 DAVID W . SCHINDLER David William Schindler, OC, D Phil, FRSC, FRS was born in Fargo, North DakotaBarnesville, Minnesota on August 3 rd , 1940. HeE grew up in nearby Barnesville, Minnesota. At the University of North Dakota State University in Fargo, , he initially studied engineering and physics, but a summer job as a research assistant to a biologist resulted in his shifting his major to Zoology. He completed a B Sc degree in 1962 and received a Rhodes Scholarship enabling him to complete a Doctorate in Aquatic Ecology at Oxford University. In 1966, he accepted a teaching position at Trent University and, in 1968, was recruited by the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, later to be replaced by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Schindler was instrumental in the formation of the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) freshwater research program in northwestern Ontario and moved to Winnipeg where it was headquartered. He first undertook research that challenged theories held in the 1960s that carbon was responsible for the over-fertilization problems of lakes. His team proved that phosphorus was the key stimulator of plant growth and animal population changes in lakes, and that the lakes could be brought back to health through the control of phosphorus. This resulted in changes in legislation not only in Canada but also abroad. He then focused on the harmful effects of acid rain leading to policy changes, including restrictions on acid emissions. In 1989, Schindler moved to the University of Alberta to become the Killam Memorial Chair and a Professor of Ecology. There he has worked on the effects of climate change, particularly on Canada’s Alpine and Northern Boreal Ecosystems, UV radiation and the impact of increased acidity on Boreal Lake Ecosystems , and on the effects of the oil sands industry on the Athabasca River. He teaches limnology; the philosophy, sociology and politics of science and science and public policy in Canada; and environmental decision making. He has been honoured in Canada and internationally. Date and place of birth (if available): 1940, Fargo North Dakota Date and place of interview: Office of Dr. David Schindler in the Biological Sciences Building at the University of Alberta, March 7, 2013 Contact Information: Mailing address: Department of Biological Sciences University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E9 Phone number: (780) 492-1291 Fax number: (780) 492-9234 email: [email protected] Tel res. (780) 325-3770 Sponsors of The Oil Sands Oral History Project include the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Connacher Oil and Gas Limited, Imperial Oil Limited, MEG Energy Corp., Nexen Inc., Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada. 2 Name of interviewer: Adriana A. Davies, CM, PhD Name of videographer: Jimmy Bustos Full names (spelled out) of all others present: N/A Consent form signed: Yes Transcript reviewed by subject: Yes Interview Duration: 2 hours and 10 minutes Initials of Interviewer: AD Last name of subject: SCHINDLER AD: It is the 7 th of March and it’s 8:59 am. I am Adriana Davies and I’m the Researcher/Interviewer on the Oil Sands Oral History Project. I am in the office of Dr. David Schindler. David, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed for the project. SCHINDLER: You’re welcome. AD: As you know, the videotaped interview and the transcript will reside in the Glenbow Archives and will be available to researchers and, we hope, will be one of those little legacy pieces that will be of value in determining a number of outcomes in terms of the oil sands in Alberta. Now, I’ll begin by asking you to state your place and date of birth, and then to give me a summary biography, in broad strokes, and then we will drill down and talk about your specific scientific background and your involvement in the oil sands. SCHINDLER: My family comes from Northwestern Minnesota; I was actually born in Fargo, North Dakota which was the nearest hospital in 1940 when I was born. I spend most of my early life in Northwestern Minnesota. I went to school in a little town known as Barnesville, and I did very well at school. I was told by my advisers that I should become either a medical doctor or an engineer. I knew medical doctors spent a lot of time indoors, which I didn’t like, so I decided to become an engineer. I got a scholarship to the University of Minnesota; spent two years there hating engineering. I was good at math and found that the math part was very easy. The physics problems were more interesting and I always did very well at physics but something was missing. And, then, by accident in the summer after my second year, I met a biologist , Gabriel Comita, at North Dakota State University, or as it was then North Dakota Agricultural College, who was looking for someone to set up and run a bomb calorimeter to do energy contents of organisms so that he could follow Sponsors of The Oil Sands Oral History Project include the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Connacher Oil and Gas Limited, Imperial Oil Limited, MEG Energy Corp., Nexen Inc., Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada. 3 energy transfer in food chains. I didn’t know anything about food chains except from what I had learned from fishing but I knew bomb calorimetry because it had been freshman physics and I got a job with him for the summer. That summer I read my first ecology texts and reference works and I switched fields, switched universities and never looked back. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My favourite book then was one written by Charles Elton, widely regarded as the father of animal ecology, which was called The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants. It was written in 1958 and it was the first documentation of how human travel around the world and human trade were moving organisms to ecosystems where they didn’t belong, and how some of them were creating havoc with the new continents. He actually speculates that this would be very important and that it needed to be considered in the ecology in the future world. That book just blew me away. I wanted to work with Elton . and the fellow that employed me, Gabe Kameeda Comita one day came up with a little form and threw it in my lap when I was sitting in his office and said, “You should apply for that; if you got that, you could go apply to work with Elton.” It was a Rhodes Scholarship application. I didn’t think I had the credentials to get a Rhodes Scholarship, but I had one publication, was in Science . and I think a good example of how naive I was, I thought Science was a low-class journal and, if I got really good, I’d get to publish in specialists journals. That, and a little bit of athletic ability, and good grades generally were enough. I had never been east of the Wisconsin/Minnesota border before, but was parachuted into the UK - talk about a culture shock - but I ended up getting a DPhil [Doctor of Philosophy degree] there. I visited Minnesota a few times while I was there , and I didn’t like what was happening. Forests were being cut and lakes that I had enjoyed fishing were being ringed with cottages and all sorts of heavy development was going on. The jobs that were open at the time were in gritty industrial cities like New Haven,Connecticut, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, which I thought was just a suburb of Detroit ., or at least so it seemed to me. So, I was very grateful when I was able to get a job at Trent University, which was brand new, in Peterborough Ontario. I sort of escaped the US as an ecological refugee. I didn’t really like being a university professor. In those days Trent was suffering from some growing pains and Ontario was in its first budget crisis. The new smaller universities were taking a big hit. At the time, this new opportunity to head the experimental lakes area cropped up , which looked to me like a great outdoor adventure, among other things, and the group that was assembled in Winnipeg, which was a place I really didn’t want to live , was like a “who’s who” of aquatic sciences ,. S including s ome of the very best scientists in Europe and a collection of the best young talent in North America, so it was a group that was both awing to work with, for a young scientist, and a lot of fun because of all the people similar in age. So I took that job, founded and landed in Experimental Lakes Area for 22 years . and, Aat that point, feeling the need for a change after 22 years, and having a wife who had been unemployed for 10 years working on “soft money” because the small university in Winnipeg of Manitoba had no position for her, we started looking for places where we could both have careers and turned out the Sponsors of The Oil Sands Oral History Project include the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Connacher Oil and Gas Limited, Imperial Oil Limited, MEG Energy Corp., Nexen Inc., Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada. 4 best opportunity was here at the University of Alberta .