At Home in the Boreal Forest

Maureen Kershaw faced an unexpected dilemma in 2006.

She was an established environmental and forestry consultant and a former lecturer in biology and conservation biology at Nipissing University. But if she wanted to keep a promise made over a decade earlier – and fulfil a lifelong goal – she would be returning to university as a student.

“I had a bet with my son Devon when he was in elementary school,” Maureen says. “I told him that if he ever competed in the Olympics, I would complete a PhD. And darned if he didn’t make the Olympics in 2006!”

Devon, a talented Canadian World Cup cross country skier, would go on to compete in three Olympic Games and lead the Canadian men’s ski team to World Cup medals. So Maureen went ahead and enrolled in a PhD program in natural resources management at Lakehead University – even though she’d just moved to Thunder Bay to start a demanding part-time job. “Being a mature student is humbling,” she says, “but it creates an amazing perspective on life.”

For the next eight years, Maureen toiled away at her PhD in the evenings and on weekends while spending her days as working chair of the Forestry Futures Trust (FFT) Committee.

Forestry Futures Trust is an arms-length organization that preserves Ontario’s Crown forests by disbursing up to $20 million a year to programs including re-establishing forests after natural disturbances, to overseeing the province’s independent forest audit program, and funding for the provincial forest inventory.

Maureen’s academic success wouldn’t have been possible without an incredible support network of friends and colleagues – the Lakehead University Masters Running Club, Thunder Bay’s ski community, and the FFT Committee. “They stepped in to keep me going when I was ready to give up.”

Maureen’s love of the natural world was sparked as a youngster growing up in Guelph, Ontario. “I was forever collecting leaves, exploring a nearby woodlot, and mucking in the water,” she says, “so I always had in mind that I wanted to be part of work healing the land.”

She did a Bachelor of Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo followed by a Master of Science in Plant Ecology at the University of Alberta. After finishing her master’s, Maureen put her education to practical use.

She began her career in western Canada before relocating to Wawa as a district land use planner for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR). Two years later, she transferred to the MNR in Sudbury where she was a regional soil specialist and then a regional forest ecologist between 1979 and 1989. At that point, she left the public sector to found her own company – Devlin Environmental Consulting – at the same time that she was having her third child.

Sudbury’s proximity to the outdoors allowed Maureen to share her love of nature with her kids. “We’re a granola-crunching, ski-through-the-forest-type of family,” she says. By the time Maureen took on the Forestry Futures Trust position in Thunder Bay, her children were young adults and beginning to strike out on their own paths.

Maureen graduated with her PhD in the spring of 2014, making all of her children tremendously proud of her. Her daughter Linnaea, a writer and teacher as well as a Lakehead grad, and her youngest son Sean, an artist and copy editor, were both there when Maureen walked across the stage of the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium to receive her degree. “Convocation was the greatest celebration,” she says, “it was very special having them there.”

A new adventure began for Maureen in April 2015. After eight years in Thunder Bay, she was hired as a forest ecosystems science coordinator with the Ontario Forest Research Institute in Sault Ste. Marie – and her passion for maintaining the integrity of Ontario’s ecosystems continues unabated.