AR-News: (CA) R.D. Lawrence

[Barry Kent MacKay]

I am sorry to report the passing of R. D. Lawrence.  
 
According to his recent publisher, Barry Penhale, “Ron Lawrence died
peacefully on Thursday, Nov. 27, 2003, in the Village of Haliburton, ON, and
in the presence of his wife, Sharon.  He was eighty two.  The 27th of
November also marked the 30th anniversary of his proposal to Sharon, as well
as his daughter’s birthday.  In his last moments, Ron listened to a
recording of wolf calls, finding comfort in the sounds of the animals he
loved throughout his life.”
 
Ron was born at sea, on September 12, 1921, in Spanish territorial waters,
but aboard a British vessel.  That was appropriate as his father was
English, his mother Spanish, and to me Ron was a perfect blend of the two
cultures, his Spanish temper and romantic flare modified by classic British
reserve.  
 
In 1976, the teenaged Ron’s private education was interrupted by the Spanish
Civil War.  He was only 14, but already committed against fascism, and he
enlisted in the Infantry division of the Spanish Republican Army, often
acting as an interpreter, being, of course, perfectly bilingual.  He was
wounded and released from duty two years later, and began to work as a cub
reporter, and to return to his interrupted education.
 
But he was again motivated to fight against fascist oppression and served
with the British Army as an anti-aircraft gunner in World War II.  
 
The war marked him and undoubtedly contributed to the melancholy
undercurrent that many of us who knew him much later could detect in his
otherwise gracious manner.  He had seen what horror humans were capable of
doing.
 
His university education commenced in 1946, and he studied biology and
English literature.  By 1949 he was also writing for a British newspaper,
which involved much foreign travel, particularly in Africa, where he could
indulge his fascination for wildlife.
 
In 1954 Ron immigrated to Canada, a country at peace, and a country that
embraced what he yearned: the solitude of wilderness.  He worked briefly for
The Toronto Star, but his main interest was in getting away from people and
human affairs, and into wilderness.  He was, like many Europeans, fascinated
by the concept of wilderness still inhabited by bears and wolves and chose a
country where there was still such wilderness to be found.  He settled into
a cabin in the forest at Lake of the Woods, living off the land as a
labourer and logger.  
 
He also started a trapline, his view being that the land could and should
support him.  But the horror of suffering he saw on the trapline was a
pivotal moment in his life (reminiscent of the story of Grey Owl) and in a
fit of lonely rage at what he had become, killing the very creatures whose
pure innocence he so valued in contrast to the horrors of human degradation
he had witnessed, he smashed the traps with an axe and threw them into a
lake.  Never again would they, or he, contribute to the fur industry;
indeed, he opposed it.  In the anti-fur book, Skinned (International
Wildlife Coalition,) 1988, Ron wrote that in his field journal of the
morning of January 12, 1957, he said, “This morning I pulled all my traps,
35 of them, and I smashed them with the axe-head; afterwards I tossed them
in the lake.  Twenty-one muskrats, five mink, and three beaver died in
torment in the traps between 7:a.m. yesterday, and 8:15 a.m. today.  I left
each animal at the place where it had died, so its energy will return to the
natural world.  I could have sold the skins, of course.  At present market
prices I could have earned about $95.  Also I could have the traps up for
sale, that way recovering at least half of the more than five hundred
dollars that I paid for them.”  
 
It caused him, decades later, much anguish to remember that time, and the
painful analysis he subjected himself to, in order to try to understand the
reasoning behind ever thinking he could be a trapper.  His essay gains
strength by virtue of his knowing first hand what he was talking about when
he spoke against the fur industry.
 
In 1958 he left his homestead and took his sole companion, part dog, part
wolf, Yukon, to explore still more remote areas of the Canadian wilderness,
roaming far from civilization in the wild places of Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
B.C., the Yukon and the Northwest Territories and south into parts of the
United States, such as Yellowstone National Park.  
 
For one 14 month period he lived with Yukon in the B.C. wilderness with no
contact with any other human during that period.  In 1961, he left the
wilderness, and as journalism and writing seemed to come effortlessly to
him, he worked for a couple of newspapers in Winnipeg, before coming to
Toronto, where he met and married his first wife, Joan Frances Gray.  He
earned money writing for the old Toronto Telegram, while maintaining
wilderness property north of the city.  He worked as a publisher for a
weekly journal for awhile.  His beautiful and beloved wife, Joan, featured
in his earlier books, tragically died young, and he sold his farm and moved
to BC, where he wrote Voyage of Stella and Ghost Walker.  
 
In 1973 he returned to Ontario where he married Sharon Frise.  I can attest
that they were deeply and satisfyingly in love, and lived on 100 acres of
wilderness property in the Haliburton Highlands in the company of their
companion wolves, Tundra, Taiga, Alba, Bridget, Leda and Numa, working to
rescue and rehabilitate wild animals (helping more than 900, with a very
high success rate).
 
Ron always accepted our invitations to lecture about the wild animals he
knew, not as cute pets nor as research subjects, but as actual individuals
with minds and wills and attitudes of their own.  His vocal opposition to
hunting and trapping took courage, given that he lived far from police help
and was more than once harassed by goons.  He constantly worried that his
animals would be shot in revenge for his strong views, often expressed in
local newspapers.
 
R.D. Lawrence wrote more than 30 books.  They were published in 26 different
countries, and in 15 different languages.  They include such classics as
Paddy, The Poison Makers, Secret Go the Wolves, The Zoo that Never Was, In
Praise of Wolves, The White Puma (a work of fiction in which the protagonist
is, in fact, a white puma), The Green Trees Beyond, and many others.
 
On a personal note, once, when beset by emotional problems and dark fears
and fighting to maintain my sanity, Ron donated an afternoon of simply
talking with me, and while I don’t recall a single sentence of that
conversation I do recall that it was a turning point in my depression that
the man had a natural ability to see through and deep into human nature, to
tell me what I had to hear, to listen to what it was important for me to
say.  At other times I found him to be a fascinating conversationalist, ever
the story-teller, yes, but stories that were true and steeped in
understanding of the nature of animals, including the human species.
 
I recall once being with Ron in a canoe on a quiet northern lake, late at
night, listening for wolves.  None howled.  There was a gentle mist just
above the water, star-silvered, and occasionally a loon would utter a few
preliminary notes, and bullfrogs at the distant marshy shoreline expressed
themselves in bass notes, but that only enhanced the overall silence. 
Finally Ron put his head back and uttered the most realistic wolf howl I’ve
ever heard this side of a real wolf.  For fifteen minutes he called, and I
was chilled and thrilled by the uncanny reality of the vocalizations.  “No,”
he said, finally, when there was no response “they are not close enough to
hear, or prefer just to listen.”
Indeed, I thought no wolf could have resisted such a virtuoso performance.
 
The next day, in a local general store, a young tourist commented about
hearing the wolves howl last night, for fifteen minutes
at exactly the time
Ron and I were out on the lake, trying to entice real wolves to howl.
 
I started to explain that it was not wolves he had overheard, but Ron.
 
But an older man, a local, interrupted me.  “I heard them, too, son,” he
said, gently.  “I’ve lived here all my life and I do know the howl of
wolves.  That was wolves that were hollerin’ across the lake last night, not
a man.  Real wolves.”  
 
I smiled and did not argue.
 
It was Alzheimer’s that began to rob us of this gifted man, most at ease in
the wild places, and it is comforting to me to think that in his confused
state the last sound he ever heard was the sound of howling wolves
.a lonely
sound that speaks not to the world of men and wars and traps and poisons and
the horrors we so often perpetuate on the non-humans who share this
planet
but that speaks to wildness and freedom and the purity of wilderness
and the basic innocence of the world that we seem so intent on destroying.  
 
It is a world in need of champions of the strength, talent, kindness and
ability of R.D. Lawrence, but he was one alone among all of us; a very
special person.  If the howling of the wolves sounds sadder these cold
nights, there is good reason.  
 
His book The North Runner (1980, Holt, Rhineheart & Winston; winner of the
best non-fiction paperback award of the Canadian Paperback Publishers
Association) has just been reprinted as an expanded version, with some of
Ron’s own photographs, and published by Natural Heritage.  It is about
Yukon, the mix-wolf-dog breed companion who shared wilderness adventure with
Ron. Heritage has also re-issued new and revised editions of The Place in
the Forest (1998) and Where the Water Lilies Grow (1999).   
 
 
____________________________________________
 
Barry Kent MacKay