Honourable senators, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” There is no better epitaph than this for the great environmental scientist Dr. David Schindler, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, who died March 4 at the age of 80.

Born in North Dakota, Dr. Schindler earned a PhD in Ecology from Oxford in 1966. Shortly after, he became founding director of Ontario’s Experimental Lakes Area. His large-scale experiments in northwest Ontario, using entire lakes as his laboratories, delivered proof that phosphate-rich fertilizers and detergents were creating algae blooms and destroying Canadian lakes. His research and his fierce advocacy led to North American bans on phosphates in detergent.

He also did vital experimental research on the impact of acid rain on water bodies and on biodiversity, proving that a small amount of acidification could destroy an ecosystem’s entire food chain. His research helped underpin the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement signed in 1991.

In 1989, Dr. Schindler took up the Killam Memorial Chair at the University of Alberta and began decades of study of fresh water in Alberta, including groundbreaking examinations of the impact of Alberta’s forestry and oil industries on the province’s aquatic ecosystems. He was a powerful defender, not just of lakes and rivers, but of the Boreal Forests and the treaty rights of the First Nations, whose traditional territories included those waters and forests.

He was also a charismatic science communicator, adept at using the media and taking on governments. His opinions mattered because they were backed by rigorous research.

Professor Schindler once compared debating politicians to playing chess with a gorilla:

The game is boring and you know you are going to win, but you have to be prepared to duck once in a while when they get angry and take a swing at you.

He was an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as well as a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence. He won the first Stockholm Water Prize, and in 2020, he was named one of the greatest Canadian explorers of all time by Canadian Geographic.

He was also a former competitive wrestler, a one-time NFL prospect, and someone who once owned 85 sled dogs and liked to take his 10-dog sled team over 5,000 kilometres each winter. He was one of the greatest ecologists of all time and a great Alberta hero.

May his soul be bound up in the bond of life as, indeed, it always was.