Louise de Kiriline Lawrence

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (née Louise Flach; January 30, 1894 – April 27, 1992), a Swedish-born immigrant to Canada, was a nurse, naturalist, and award-winning author. For one year from 1934 to 1935, she was the chief nurse in charge of the Dionne Quintuplets’ nursery — this work with the quintuplets won for her a King George V Silver Jubilee Medal. She became in 1954 the first Canadian woman to be named an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists' Union and in 1970 received an honorary LL.D. from Laurentian University.

Quotes

Russians! The old enmities imprinted into my mind by hearsay and history lessons were not so easily eradicated. Russia, the massive land in the east, always in search of outlets to the sea, of land and more land to satisfy its gluttonous cravings for own its own purported security, a ruthless giant dangerously dwarfing its smaller neighbors.
Nonetheless, soon after New Year I took the train south and on a dull wintry afternoon arrived in Horserød, the camp for Russian prisoners of war.
- Another Winter, Another Spring: A Love Remembered. Dundurn Press. 1987. p. 35. ISBN 9781459714861. (280 pages; 1st edition 1977)

My banding station is in the heart of the breeding grounds for the majority of the Eastern North-American song-birds. Except for a few, such as the tree sparrow and the white-crowned sparrow which breed in the Barrens, most of their migratory flyways come to an end in this Canadian zone. My traps stand in the midst of the woods surrounding my house, their locations carefully chosen according to season and the species expected to be visiting them.
- To Whom the Wilderness Speaks. Dundurn Press. 1989. p. 4. ISBN 9781554883677. (192 pages; illustrated by Aleta Karstad; 1st edition 1980)

In 1935, Louise retired from nursing to write The Quintuplets' First Year (1936). Around her log cabin in northern Ontario she rediscovered nature. The Pimisi Bay area provided her with a perfect outdoor laboratory and there, in the early 1940s, she began banding birds. Later, with the encouragement of Doris H. and J. Murray Speirs, as well as Margaret Morse Nice, she studied breeding biology. ...
... In 1969 she received both the John Burroughs' Memorial Award for "distinguished writing in natural history" and the Sir G.D. Roberts Special Award.