Louise de Kiriline Lawrence

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence was born Louise Flach on January 30, 1894, in Svensksund, Vikbolandet, Sweden, to Hillevid Neergaard and Sixten Flach.[1] Her father Sixten was a trained naturalist.[2] He helped to establish the bird sanctuary on Stora Karlsö, an island west of Gotland. Louise's early life was one of wealth and social connections. At the age of 18, she was presented at court to Gustav V of Sweden.[3]

De Kiriline Lawrence trained as a nurse and was employed by the Danish Red Cross during World War I.[1] One of her patients in a Denmark camp hospital was a Russian officer, Lt. Gleb Nikoleyevich Kirilin; they married in 1918. He returned to Russia to fight with the White Army in the Russian Civil War, and she followed him there in 1919. After several weeks, the married couple was captured by the Red Army and separated. Louise, after her release, visited Gleb in Moscow. In June 1919, Gleb and other officers were transferred and Louise lost contact with him.[3] Gleb Kirilin disappeared in Siberia where, according to accounts, he was executed. Keeping up hope that Gleb would be found, Louise worked as a nurse in Russia for several years while she searched for him,[2][3][4] including work with European Student Relief.[5]

In 1927 de Kiriline Lawrence emigrated to Canada and continued to work as a nurse, joining the outpost service of the Canadian Red Cross Society.[2][5] Stationed in rural northern Ontario, she became well known as the nurse to the Dionne quintuplets during the first year of their lives. For her work with the quints, she received a King George V Silver Jubilee Medal.[2]

She retired from nursing in 1935,[3] and lived in a cabin in Northern Ontario. She met Leonard Lawrence, a carpenter, and married him in 1939.[2] By this time she had begun a new career as an ornithologist and nature writer. Percy A. Taverner encouraged her to band birds; Doris Huestis Speirs and Margaret Morse Nice also served as mentors to de Kiriline Lawrence.[5] She is recognized for her study of the red-eyed vireo, which identified the songbird as capable of producing 22,197 distinct calls in a single day.[6] She published nearly twenty scientific papers in The Auk, The Wilson Bulletin, and The Canadian Field-Naturalist and more than 40 articles for Audubon and other popular magazines.[5] De Kiriline Lawrence carried out the majority of her scientific work on her property, located outside of North Bay, Ontario.

In 1954, de Kiriline Lawrence became the first Canadian woman to be named an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists' Union. She received an honorary LL.D. from Laurentian University in 1970.[5]

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence died on April 27, 1992, in North Bay, Ontario.[1]

• The Quintuplets' First Year (1936)
• The Loghouse Nest (1945)
• de Kiriline Lawrence, Louise (1967). "A Comparative Life-History Study of Four Species of Woodpeckers". Ornithological Monographs. 5: 1–156.
• The Lovely and the Wild (1968)
• Mar: A Glimpse into the Natural Life of a Bird (1976)
• Another Winter, Another Spring: A Love Remembered (1977)
• To Whom the Wilderness Speaks (1980)

• The Burroughs Medal, 1969, for The Lovely and the Wild[2][7]
• The Sir Charles G. D. Roberts Special Award, 1969[5]
• Francis H. Kortright Outdoor Writing Award, 1980[5]
• Doris Huestis Speirs Award, for outstanding lifetime contributions to Canadian ornithology, from the Society of Canadian Ornithologists, 1991[3][8]

• Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi (October 1992). "In Memoriam, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, 1894-1992". The Auk. 109 (4): 909–910. doi:10.2307/4088171. JSTOR 4088171.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• De Kiriline Lawrence, Louise. "Why Did You Come to Canada?" Chatelaine, October 1937, 21 & 53.
• Mohr, Merilyn. "To Whom the Wilderness Speaks: The remarkable life of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence." Harrowsmith 83, (1989): 72–81.
• Nero, Robert W. Woman by the Shore and Other Poems: A Tribute to Louise de Kiriline Lawrence. Toronto: Natural Heritage, 1990.