Table Of ContentAHISTORYOF
ENTOMOLOGYI N
WESTERNC ANADA
PAULW RIEGERT
PAUL W. RIEGERT is a member of the Department of Biology at the University of
Regina.
Across the prairies and west to the Pacific, man has had to fight a constant battle
against insect pests. He has had to learn about these enemies, and then how to
control them. This is the story of entomology in western Canada from the time of
the explorers to the outbreak of the Second World War - a history of a science,
but also of a war.
Riegert describes the impact of insect hordes, from the mosquitoes which
assaulted the Danish explorer Jens Munk on the shores of Hudson Bay in 1619,
to the devastating plagues of grasshoppers of the 1930s.
He tells of the experiences and contributions to entomology of early collectors
and naturalists, both professional and amateur. In the face of insect threats to
lives and fortunes, however, the task of the entomologist moved beyond identifi
cation and description into insect control. To suppress or eliminate certain
species, quarantine and control laws were passed, chemical poisons used, preda
tory or parasitic species brought into action. Various agricultural and physical
approaches to control were employed.
Concurrently professional entomology developed, beginning with the appoint
ment of James Fletcher as first Dominion Entomologist, through the estab
lishment by 1914 of entomological laboratories at Agassiz, British Columbia,
Treesbank, Manitoba, and Lethbridge, Alberta, to the general growth of taxo
nomic work in western Canada up to 1940. The author also looks at academic
entomology in this period.
This account of the interaction of insects and man in western Canada com
prises a detailed and absorbing history suited to entomologists, natural historians,
historians of science, researchers, and teachers.
Norman Criddle, dean of early western Canadian entomologists
PAUL W. RIEGERT
From Arsenic to
DDT:
A Historyo f Entomology
in WesternC anada
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 1980
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-5499-4
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Riegert, Paul W., 1923-
From arsenic to DDT
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8020-5499-4
I. Entomology - Canada, Western - History.
2. Insects, Injurious and beneficial - Canada,
Western - History. 3. Insect control - Canada,
Western - History. I. Title.
595.709712 c80-094408-9
TO
Dr K.M. King, who, by his example, taught me diligence, honesty,
and exactitude in science;
the entomologists I have known, whose friendliness is unexcelled;
the insects, our worthy adversaries
Contents
FOREWORD by Dr John H. Archer ix
PREFACE xi
Introduction 3
Part I Early encounters
I Explorers versus insects 7
2 Settlers versus insects 23
3 Collectors and naturalists 41
Part II The first professionals
4 James Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist 59
5 The North-West (Canada) Entomological Society 81
6 Western expansion: Hewitt, Criddle, and Strickland 86
Part III Insects of British Columbia
7 British Columbia entomology 101
8 Eric Hearle versus mosquitoes 119
9 William Downes at Victoria 132
10 Glendenning at Agassiz 146
11 The interior 163
I 2 Indian orchards 1 84
Part IV Insects of the prairies
13 The locust: 1919-1923 195
14 The wheat stem sawfly 214
viii Contents
15 Return of the locust: the thirties 222
16 Worms 252
Part V Specialization
17 Pests, paralysis, and plagues 281
18 Insects of stored products 300
19 Entomology in the universities 307
Conclusion
20 An uneasy truce 31 5
Federal entomological officers 323
NOTES 325
A NOTE ON SOURCES 347
INDEX 349
Foreword
A wide clientele of researchers and readers will be grateful to Professor Paul Riegert
for this work on the history of entomology in western Canada. The volume is written
in a vigorous style, its research and scholarship softened by humour and human
interest. Certainly it bears that ring of authority that knowledge of a subject brings to
any recital of developments. The author is well qualified to write on entomology. He
spent more than twenty years as a research scientist in Canada Agriculture Research
Station at Saskatoon. He spent ten years as a professor of biology at the University of
Regina and is at present head of the department. He was born in Saskatchewan and
grew up in the environment of which he writes.
Professor Riegert's work covers the four western provinces - certainly a suffi
ciently broad area to give scope for comparisons. He has gone back in history to
remind the reader that early explorers, fur traders, and travellers encountered
insects firsthand and wrote of their experiences with candour. Historians have not
always reckoned with the influence of mosquito, black fly, and horsefly on the views
held by intruders in the Great Lone Land. Professor Riegert points out that the
Entomological Society of Canada was formed in 1862, five years prior to Confedera
tion and while the north-west was still the preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The backward look, however, is but an introduction to the era of settlement.
The opening of the prairie west to agricultural settlement and the arrival of
settlers in great numbers from many foreign countries brought an immediate and
direct interest in the insect life of the prairies. The settlement of river valleys in
British Columbia and the development of orchards resulted in the same direct inter
est in insect pests there. Up to this period insects had been considered a source of
irritation to man and beast alike - a fact of the country. Some visitors had found
aesthetic pleasure in the variety of insect life. With the coming of the homesteaders
the economic factor came to the fore. There had been locusts and grasshoppers and
various other pests to destroy crops and gardens in the Red River Valley. The
