Memorial to Alice E. Wilson (1881-1964) C!

MEMORIAL TO ALICE E. WILSON (1881-1964) C!. WINSTON SINCLAIR Geological Surrey of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

The death of Alice Evelyn Wilson on April 15, 1964, in her 83rd year, closed the long career of one of Canada's most respected geologists. Miss Wilson had been a Fellow of The Geological Society of America since 1936. Alice Wilson was born August 26, 1881, in Co- bourg, Ontario. In a memorial written on the death of her older brother Alfred, and published in the Proceedings of this Society for 1954, she described her family and the setting in which she spent her girlhood. It was a family in which scholarship was greatly respected, and high standards were set for the children. Alice's older brothers set a formidable example: by the time she was of college age, Alfred was a Harvard Ph.D. and recognized as a brilliant young geologist and Norman was being acclaimed as a mathe- matical genius. Perhaps the example was too formidable. Alice's health was not good, and she was 20 before she could enter the University of Toronto. During her final year, she suffered a breakdown and had to leave without her degree. After a long convalescence she returned to active life, but did not resume her courses. Perhaps the field in which she had been studying, Modern Languages, did not represent her real interests. Miss Wilson once told me, by way of explaining her career, that in her youth teaching was the only respectable field for a young lady, and presumably her choice of languages was in deference to this attitude. At any rate, when she regained her health she took employment as an assistant in the Uni- versity's Museum of Mineralogy. Outdoor geology had been one of the many active diversions of the Wilson children, and the fossils in the Cobourg limestones around her home and the rocks and minerals found on family canoe trips into the lake country north of Cobourg had given her an enthusiasm for the subject which she never lost. In 1909, Miss Wilson joined the staff of the Geological Survey of Canada, with which she was to identify herself for more than 50 years. One of the functions of the Survey, at that time, was the maintenance of the collections which later became the National Museum of Canada, and Miss Wilson was engaged as a Museum As- sistant. Her duties were mainly clerical, cataloguing the old collections, preparing labels, and such tasks. Her training in languages was put to good use when Percy Raymond was preparing the trilobite chapter for the Eastman edition of Zittel. Miss Wilson made the English translation from which Raymond worked. In 1911, * Photo courtesy Karsh-Ottawa.

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she took the examinations needed for completion of her degree and was graduated from the University of Toronto, B.A. Raymond encouraged her scientific interests and ambitions, and when the Survey celebrated the opening of its new building, the Victoria Memorial Museum, by inaugurating a series of Museum Bulletins, a paper by Miss Wilson was included in the first issue. This is interesting, for this first Bulletin was a showpiece to which each of the scientific officers contributed a study. Clearly at this time Miss Wilson was being accepted as a scientific colleague, despite her clerical status and kck of formal training. Raymond's influence can be seen, too, in the studies Miss Wilson began on the rocks and fossils of the Ottawa Valley, of which Bulletin 33, although not published until 1921, was the first fruit. The expansion and extension of those studies was to be her life's work. But Raymond left for Harvard, and the climate in Ottawa changed. Many of Miss Wilson's colleagues and superiors resented her ambition to be a geologist, and to be recognized as one, and did all they could to prevent her from joining their snug masculine circle. Miss Wilson was a lady, and although her opponents proved that they were no gentlemen, it was not in her nature to fight meanly. But neither was it in her nature to give up. Through years of frustration and humiliation she quietly persisted, doing the work assigned to her and carrying on her Ordovician studies as best she could. In 1915, using her statutory leave and her own funds, she spent 6 weeks at Cold Spring Harbor, studying Comparative Anatomy and Marine Biology. From then on, she applied annually for leave to do further academic work. This was annually refused until 1926, when the Survey after making a tactical error found itself battling the Federation of University Women and was forced to accede. Thus in the fall of 1926, Miss Wilson went to the University of Chicago to study under Stuart Weller, and after his death to continue under Carey Croneis. She was graduated Ph.D. in 1929, submitting as a dissertation a report on the geology and palaeontology of the area around Cornwall, Ontario. Her intimate knowledge of this district was to prove of great value when construction of the St. Lawrence Sea- way was undertaken, and she was frequently called upon for expert advice as that project developed. Miss Wilson continued as an officer of the Survey until her 65th birthday, in 1946. During most of these years she was responsible for reporting on all Paleozoic in- vertebrates submitted for examination, apart from the Devonian. A heavy assign- ment at best, this task became overwhelming as the mapping program of the Sur- vey expanded and as interest in the petroleum possibilities of the West increased. Her own work on the Ontario Ordovician had to be put aside, and only taken up in those rare and scattered hours when there was a lull in the more urgent duties. It was never abandoned, however, and the year of her retirement saw the publication of a short memoir on the geology of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence Lowland, and the first of a series of bulletins on the fossils. Miss Wilson retained her office at the Survey, and worked almost every day until 1963, continuing the faunal studies she had begun more than 50 years earlier.

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Throughout her life Miss Wilson was an enthusiastic teacher, and delighted in leading field trips, explaining fossils to visitors to the Museum, and telling any group who would listen about the wonders of her science. This side of her interests was shown in her long association with the Ottawa Field Naturalists Club and its work, and also by the writing of a book about geology for children, The Earth Beneath Our Feet. When Carleton University was started in Ottawa after the war it relied heavily on scholars and scientists in the public service until a permanent staff could be organized. Miss Wilson welcomed the chance to join them, and from 1948 to 1958 she served as Lecturer in palaeontology. This was a happy time for Miss Wilson, for she keenly enjoyed the students, and her colleagues included such old friends as F. J. Alcock and Frank McLearn. In 1960, Carleton acknowledged her services to them and to geology by awarding her the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Other honors came to her. She was the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 1935 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.). Since most readers of this Memorial will be Americans, a historical parenthesis may be necessary. In 1919, the Canadian Government of the day decided that the custom of recognizing eminent service to the state by some award in the name of the monarch was unseeming in an egalitarian society and passed a resolution saying so. Since then, apart for wartime services, no Canadian has been so honored, with the exception of 1935. In that year a new government, which did not feel bound by the old resolution, recommended a number of awards, and it was then that Miss Wilson was made an M.B.E. This public recognition of her status as an out- standing woman scientist was undoubtedly because, since 1926, she had been adopted as a champion by organized women's groups. The award had an ironic corollary, for it caught the Survey off-base and in 1936 they gave her the promotion that should have been automatic when she took her doctorate. Miss Wilson's contribution to Canadian geology was a large and important one. Apart from innumerable reports which were incorporated in regional memoirs, and pioneering studies in the Ordovician faunas of the Arctic and Rocky Mountains, her work lay in eastern Ontario. She described, and mapped on a 1-mile scale, an area of 5500 square miles. She made known, in what may be called "reconnaissance palaeontology," the fossils of the most important rocks found there. This was a great achievement. That it fell short of what she had hoped it to be does not detract from its value. In person Miss Wilson was a most charming and gracious lady, whose warmth and boundless kindness endeared her to all, and captivated the young people she loved to be with. Very tall, very thin to the point of fragility, she was a striking figure. There was no trace of pretention or solemnity in her, and a wonderfully sly sense of humor made her a delightful, if often unpredictable, person. At times Miss Wilson made me think of the lines, ' 'She was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad." Certainly, she was able to stand aside from the world, and enjoy its madness, while at the same time being very serious about what she felt to be her duty in it.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ALICE E. WILSON 1913. A new brachiopod from the base of the Utica: Victoria Memorial Mus. Bull. 1, p. 81-84 1914. A preliminary study of the variations of the plications oiParastrofhia hemiplicata Hall: Canada Geol. Survey, Mus. Bull. 2, p. 131-139 1915. A new Ordovician pelecypod from the Ottawa district: Ottawa Naturalist, v. 29, p. 85-86 (With K. F. Mather) Synopsis of the common fossils of the Kingston area (Ont.): Ontario Bur. Mines, Ann. Rept. 25, p. 45-62 1921. The range of certain lower Ordovician faunas of the Ottawa Valley with descriptions of some new species: Canada Geol. Survey, Bull. 33, p. 19-57 1926. An upper Ordovician fauna from the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia: Canada Geol. Survey, Bull. 44, p. 1-34 1931. Notes on the Baffinland fossils: Royal Soc. Canada Trans, ser. 3, v. 25, p. 285-308 1932. Ordovician fossils from the regions of Cornwall, Ontario: Royal Soc. Canada Trans, ser. 3, v. 26, p. 373-408 Palaeontological notes: Canadian Field-Naturalist, v. 46, p. 133-140 Notes on the Pamelia member of the Black River formation of the Ottawa Valley: Am. Jour. Sci., v. 24, p. 135-146 1936. A synopsis of the Ordovidian of Ontario and western Quebec and the related succession in New York: Canada Geol. Survey Mem. 202, p. 1-20 1937. Erosional intervals indicated by contacts in the vicinity of Ottawa, Ontario: Royal Soc. Canada Trans., ser. 3, v. 31, p. 45-60 1938. Gastropods from Akpatok Island, Hudson Strait: Royal Soc. Canada Trans, ser. 3, v. 32, p. 25-39 Correlation of the Timiskaming outlier with description of a new cephalopod: Canadian Field-Naturalist, v. 52, p. 1-3 1941. (With others) Sedimentary basins of Ontario possible sources of oil and gas: Royal Soc. Canada Trans, ser. 3, v. 35, p. 167-185 1945-1961. Fossils of the Ottawa Formation of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence Lowland: Canada Geol. Survey Bulletins. Bull. 8, Brachiopods, 1945; Bull. 4, Echinodermata, 1946; Bull. 9, Trilo- bites, 1947; Bull. 11, Miscellaneous classes of fossils, 1948; Bull. 17, Gastropoda and Conu- larida, 1951; Bull. 28, Pelecypoda, 1956; Bull. 67, Cephalopoda, 1961 1946. A buried channel of the St. Lawrence River: Am. Jour. Sci., v. 244, p. 557-562 Geology of the Ottawa-St. Lawrence Lowlands, Ontario and Quebec: Canada Geol. Survey Mem. 241, 65 p. 1947. The earth beneath our feet: Toronto, The Macmillan Co. of Canada, 294 p. 1956. A guide to the geology of the Ottawa District (Ontario-Quebec): Canadian Field-Naturalist, v. 70, p. 1-68 1957. Life in the Proterozoic, p. 18-27 in Gill, J. E., Editor, The Proterozoic in Canada: Royal Soc. Canada Special Pub.

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