Mack Laing helped establish the outline and substance of Canada

Presentation to the Comox Rotary Club, November 20, 2014, by Loys Maingon, President of Comox Valley Nature

The presentation focused on Hamilton Mack Laing’s national stature, as a great Canadian.

Mack Laing is intimately linked to the national institution of “The Museum of Nature,” formerly the “National Museum of Natural History”, which is housed in the 1905 “Victoria Memorial Museum.” The Museum of Nature houses the collections of the Geological Survey of Canada and the National Herbarium of Canada. It is the foremost research collection of biological samples of Canada. It was extensively renovated in 2011, and has been the recipient of The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Heritage Works and Heritage Preservation.

The renovation has renewed attention on a small number of men known as “The Collectors”, who worked for the museum between the two World Wars. Few Canadians today realize that at the beginning of the Twentieth Century vast areas of northern and western Canada were unmapped and unexplored. The museums collectors were best described by Anthony Dalton in his 2011 biography of Dewey Soper as “quiet, unpretentious men who, surveying for the Dominion government, established the outline and substance of Canada.”

Dewey Soper is greatly recognized, particularly in Alberta. However, as a quick comparison of Dewey Soper’s achievements with those of Mack Laing between 1920 and 1945, quickly confirms why Mack Laing was known by the directors of the National Museum as “the top field-man in Canada”, and considered by his peers to be better than Soper.

Maingon reviewed Mack Laings role in 10 important expeditions that contributed to the making of our modern concept of Canada. He also drew attention to Mack Laing’s literary importance in his various links with Farley Mowat, and the generation of Canadian nature writers that would emerge after 1945.

-30-