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The Naturalist ? 80 Years of Observations

Dr. William E. Ricker passed quietly away in his sleep on Sept. 8, 2001, age 93. Bill had a marvellous power of observation which was recorded and collected for about fourscore years of his life.

Dr. William E. Ricker passed quietly away in his sleep on Sept. 8, 2001, age 93. Bill had a marvellous power of observation which was recorded and collected for about fourscore years of his life. Born in Ontario in 1908 to a father who taught science at the high school and "normal" school level, he began observations of the celestial heavens at an early age and was totally familiar with the star charts which he used as a teenager at North Bay.

Soon after, his interests also turned to biological organisms and he began compiling observation lists of birds, while hiking the shoreline of nearby Lake Nippissing. At the end of high school he had already a substantial "lifer" list. Thereafter, while attending the University of Toronto, he would come home at Christmas to conduct the first Audubon Christmas bird counts for North Bay in the mid 1920s, which were usually alone. Today, North Bay has the highest numbers for all such counts in North America with 900 to 1,000 participants.

At university, Bill?s interests switched from the physical and ornithological realms to botany and fisheries biology, at the urging of several aggressive professors, notably, Drs. Harkness, Dymond, and Walker. He won a prize for dry mounting and correctly identifying the most plant specimens, collected over a summer period as an undergrad. His first scientific contribution to the literature was on the stream ecology of speckled trout (eastern brook trout), published as an undergrad in 1929. It fostered further field work for a quick Masters thesis (granted 1931), before Bill went west to begin a long study of Cultus Lake and its plankton and fish populations, requiring nearly five years of all-season field work.

Bill lived a simple life at Cultus, spending nearly all of his time identifying and observing the flora and fauna of the Chilliwack River basin and Sumas Prairie area of the Fraser floodplain. Vast insect collection focussed on butterflies, dragonflies, and especially stone flies, the latter a staple diet of the salmonid family of fishes especially. At least one day a week would be a hike to the slopes of the region, helping to construct a trail up Liumchen Mountain which is still in popular use today. An impressive list of identified plants and birds was compiled from the ramblings. The word was out throughout the area that a young naturalist was cataloguing everything in the area. Old timers of Chilliwack still remember him.

Bill left the southwest corner of B.C. in 1939 to take a professor posting at Indiana University as an ornithologist, aquatic ecologist, limnologist, as well as a biostatistics instructor (an emerging new field). Mandatory autumn Saturday morning bird hikes with his students drifted into the annual Audubon Christmas bird count, followed by a winter season of extracurricular cave exploration with some students. Field work on fish populations occupied the summer.

Indiana?s climate in summer, however, was unbearable and by 1980 the Ricker family moved back west to the Pacific Biological Station at Nanaimo, whereupon Bill began the systematic exploration of the flora and fauna of the Mid-Island region in his spare time. When his sons reached university and wandering ages, so did his observations, which eventually extended throughout the coastal lowlands and mountain ranges of B.C., Washington, Oregon, and California. Audubon Christmas bird count observations were conducted for the Nanaimo area.

Observations in the Whistler region began before the highway reached this destination in the early 1960s with several trips to Black Tusk Meadows. In the 1970s he passed through Whistler, with an overnight stop at the Alpine Club Cabin, while en route to Lillooet by way of the Anderson Lake powerline road. He liked roads which were not only a challenge to drive but also provided good views of the landscape. As the grandchildren began to grow he would spend several days at Whistler in the 1980s, always with one eye cast to observations of the flora and fauna. When Max Gotz introduced an Audubon Christmas bird count to Whistler in the 1990s, Bill would come and pitch in, providing the necessary wisdom to the exuberance of the younger birders on the scene. His last such count was in his 89th year, and he celebrated his 90th birthday the following summer at Edgewater Lodge with his children and grandchildren.

Bill was a dedicated naturalist. A look at his written record of observations reveals the identification of over 900 species of plants along the west coastal area of the continent. Hi stonefly collection, identifications, and taxonomic work covered all of the continent, leading to the description of 88 new species. One of these species is special to Whistler: Podmosta macdunnoughi , after Mick MacDunnoughi who collected it near the Mons whistle stop in 1918. Bill?s "lifer" bird list stands at a modest 642 species worldwide, but 332 well observed many times each during the 80 years of his observations in Canada.

The legacy of Bill Ricker lies not only in his observations as a naturalist but also as the man who helped break up the Cold War logjam in the interchange of scientific data and ideas with the USSR. He learned to speak fluent Russian on his own because his interest in the mathematics behind sustainable fish populations was pioneered by a Russian, Feodor Illich Baranov, during World War I. This field of endeavour, published in several books, is now recognized world wide, and has brought him numerous scientific awards, including the Order of Canada bestowed on him in 1986.

On another shoe, Bill was an avid reader of the classics, the non-fiction of exploration of our planet, and the fiction of modern day novels, as well as those crafted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote spoofs on the latter, which are published; he also wrote Haiku. Fittingly, his Haiku reflects his naturalist bent, for example:

Lowest springtime tide

Grant sculpins scarlet eggs

Among brown sea weed

Breakers drench the rocks

Surf birds scamper through the spray

Gathering polychaetes

Beyond dark forests

Ice-clad Kulshau?s gleaming cone

Hides primeval fires

Farewell Bill, the Whistler Naturalists.