Dr.Edward.L.Bousfield
Ed Bousfield was born in Penticton, B. C., on June 19, 1926, son of the late Reginald Harker, and the late Marjorie Frances (née Armstrong) of Toronto, Ontario. In 1953 he married Barbara Joyce Schwartz, of Halifax, N. S. (deceased 1983) and has four children and twelve grandchildren. He is now married to Joyce Burton of Ottawa. He attended Riverdale C. I., Toronto (senior matric., 1944), the University of Toronto (B. A., 1948; M. A., 1949), and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (PhD., 1954).
An authority on amphipod crustaceans, Dr. Bousfield served at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa, as Invertebrate Zoologist (1950-1963), as Chief Zoologist (1964-1974), as Senior Scientist (until retirement in 1986), and has since continued variously as Research Associate and Curator Emeritus. During his career, he has studied the taxonomy and distribution of aquatic invertebrates on collecting expeditions all over Canada, in Alaska, on southern US and Caribbean coasts, in Australia, and on the HUDSON '70 Expedition in southern South America. Bousfield has described several hundred new crustacean taxa, from species to superfamilies, developed a modern phyletic classification of amphipods, and made major contributions to knowledge of the aquatic fauna of Canada. Since 1955, he and co-workers have conducted extensive field surveys and prepared basic descriptive papers leading to an illustrated guide to "North Pacific Amphipods", now numbering more than 800 described species, sponsored for website presentation by the Royal Ontario Museum. More recent interests include the classification of Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian) arthropods, and the biology of marine and freshwater megaserpents, including formal description of Cadborosaurus willsi, Bousfield & LeBlond, 1995.
Dr. Bousfield has been a member of the Canadian Society of Zoologists since 1962, Archivist, 1971-1992, President, 1979-80, and Honorary member, 1992-present. He is a member of the Crustacean Society, the Estuarine Research Federation, and Honorary Member of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club. His term as Senior Visiting Investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod, 1963-1970, led to publication of an illustrated guide to amphipod crustaceans of the North American Atlantic region (1973). In 1971 he was Professeur Visiteur at Laval University in Quebec City, and at various times since 1973 has been associated, as Adjunct Professor of Biology, with Carleton University, and with the Universities of New Hampshire, Toronto, and Washington. Over the years he served as external advisor on the degree committees of MSc. and PhD. students in Canada, the United States, and worldwide.
In 1978, Dr. Bousfield was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 1985, he received the Government of Canada's Outstanding Achievement Award. Since 1984 he has been a Research Associate with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and from 1990-1995 with the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. From l993 to the present, he has been Managing Editor of AMPHIPACIFICA, journal of aquatic systematic biology. Following hospitalization in 1997, he retired temporarily from science, but in 1999 returned to Ottawa for completion of the Pacific amphipod program.
His recreational interests include curling, lawn bowling, musical instruments, and steam locomotives. He is a co-founder of the "Victoria Melody Makers" swing orchestra, a former member of the "Aged in Harmony" senior men's musical group of Ottawa, the Songsters group at Somerset House, Dallas Rd., in Victoria B. C., and with wife Joyce now resides at the Amica Swan Lake residence in Markham, ON.
(partly after E. L. Mills, Canadian Encyclopedia, 1983, updated to 2008)
