Biological Station

Students and researchers at Queen’s are indebted to those who created spaces for the preservation and study of the natural world. This particular legacy consists of some 3,400 hectares amidst the dense forests and countless lakes making up the Canadian Shield country north of Kingston, where members of the university have been able to go about their scientific work for 70 years.

The Great Depression of the 1930s saw large tracts of the continent locked in drought and devastated by dust bowl conditions. In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the Civilian Conservation Corps to create jobs and nurture the environment.

When he arrived from Alberta in 1936 to become Queen’s principal, geologist Robert Wallace was determined that the university would become a partner in applying science to the challenge of conservation. He found an immediate ally in Rollo Earl, head of the Biology Department, which had always seen fieldwork as an integral part of its mandate. In the 1860s, for instance, one of Queen’s early biologists, George Lawson, created an arboretum on the grounds around Summerhill.

Principal Wallace believed that if the university could find a tract of wilderness in Kingston’s hinterland, it could serve as “a stimulus to productive, practical scientific work.” Professor Earl saw it as an opportunity to teach students in a natural setting and foster research by his faculty.

In 1942, with the aid of a grant from the Ontario government, the two men found what they wanted: a 65-acre tract of land jutting out into Lake Opinicon, about 70 kilometres north of campus.

By 1947, Queen’s Point had become home to the Queen’s University Biological Station, a cluster of laboratories and bunkhouses that came alive every summer as students and professors investigated nature and observed humanity’s impact upon the flora and fauna.

Initially directed by Professor Wes Curran, whose interest lay in freshwater fish habitats, the station flourished. Annual aquatic surveys and programs investigating phenomena ranging from forest/soil health to entomology became fixtures of the station. Over the years, it developed a convivial culture as each summer’s researchers lived and explored together. Most came to affectionately call QUBS, “cubes.”

Further acquisitions of land enabled the station to expand to 7,000 acres, land situated in the Frontenac Arch, an area designated by UNESCO as a biosphere. Partnerships with organizations such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada and other Ontario universities have dramatically broadened the station’s constituency.

Alumni generosity, such as that of Andy Chisholm, Com’81, and Laurie Thompson, Artsci’84, have given the station access to a new reserve at nearby Elbow Lake, enabling research on endangered species such as the Blanding’s turtle and the whip-poor-will. A new biodiversity educational centre has been opened.

The Jessie V. Deslauriers Centre for Biology officially opened in the summer of 2015. It was named after an alumna who provided a $1 million gift for a new research and teaching facility that now houses the official station library, several laboratories, and the 144,000 plant, lichen and moss specimens of the Fowler Herbarium, a globe-spanning collection that dates back to the Victorian era. Visitors are greeted by a life-size photograph of Deslauriers’ father, Jack Hambleton, an outdoor enthusiast and journalist who wrote books about hunting and fishing for young people. Copies of those books, along with Hambleton’s favourite fishing tackle box, adorn the library, which is named after him.

Queen's University Biological Station...