IN MEMORIAL Dr. James Birkett Cragg

Dr. James Birkett Cragg, died suddenly on November 12, 1996. Jim Cragg emigrated from England to Calgary in 1966 after being Professor of Zoology, University of Durham 1950 - 1961, and Director of Merlewood Research Station, 1961 - 1966. At The University of Calgary he was Professor of Biology 1966 - 1972, Killam: Professor 1966 - 1976, VP (Academic) 1970 - 1972, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science 1976. If friends so desire, memorial tributes may be made directly to the Foothills Hospital Foundation for the Cardiology/Electrophysiology Programme, 1403 - 29 Street N.W., Calgary, Alberta T2N 2T9. The following is a tribute to Dr. James B. Cragg given by Professor William T. Perks on the occasion of Dr. Cragg's funeral. Dr. Cragg's was a life lived as a continual enlargement of the mind and the soul. No-one I have known was more positively life-affirming than Jim Cragg. He lived a life in service to others. He was nurturer and mentor in the lives of hundreds of people. His life was one of unceasing personal development. When I think about Jim Cragg the person, and as I try to enumerate his accomplishments in science, scholarship and environmental studies and teaching, I can't escape the feeling that Jim Cragg's life itself-the living of it and what he meant to other people, in his great and many capacities-was the accomplishment he would have us remember. As a scientist and scholar, Dr. Cragg's abiding interest was Ecology. It is more accurate to say, "ecosystems"-a term introduced to the scientific community in 1935 by A.G.Tansley, two years after Jim Cragg had obtained his first class honours degree in Zoology. It is probably not widely known that Dr. Cragg spent one year after graduation studying for a diploma in "The Theory and Practice of Teaching". Following this, he went on to first teach in the Medical School at Manchester University, and in following years, at a number of other universities. He was appointed Head of the Zoology Department at Durham in 1946. Here he gained notice for conceptualizing, organizing and orchestrating a small team of graduate students in an integrative research project on invertebrates in a context of ecosystem. He then became director of the Nature Conservancy's Merlewood Research Station, in 1961. At Merlewood, Dr. Cragg's genius for research organization blossomed once again. His organizational skills and intellectual leadership in setting up and synthesizing cooperative ecosystem projects, that were spread out over many different university teams and a hundred or so scientists, became widely recognized. And then, in 1965, he received his doctorate in Science from the University of Newcastle on Tyne. The arts of professional practice in teaching, in medicine, in scientific research, in the design and leadership of institutional organizations, and later, when he was already in his sixties, Environmental Design-all of these seemingly disparate subjects of practice were some of the deep reservoirs of knowledge and ideas that Dr. Cragg would draw from in any forum. And these several subjects-as so many of us came to appreciate, in the classroom, in the conference room, or at the dining table-would invariably be cross-connected with thought and ideas drawn from other reservoirs he crafted over the years-the history of ideas and the history of human affairs ... historical geography and philosophy ...and of course, evolutionary science and man environment studies. Throughout the 10 years he was an active colleague among us, no wonder then, that Jim Cragg was the acknowledged soul of the Faculty of Environmental Design. Thinking back on his accomplishments, and as my .aboriginal friends would say, Dr. Cragg had "great power"! He was more than elder statesman; he was the Elder of our tiny band. More than a font of wisdom, he was our best and most constructive critic. Struggling as we all were-students and faculty alike-to forge identity within this new vessel called environmental design, Dr. Cragg was like a beacon on the shore in a foggy night at sea. And believe me, we were at sea many a time! Dr. Cragg could bring us down from some of our more prideful flights of ambition; and he would give us inner strength to persevere when things got depressingly difficult for one or other of us. He encouraged us in experimentation. In all, it was not only his wisdom and the practical experience in scientific and human affairs that Dr. Cragg contributed; there was a contagious vitality and optimism about him that we couldn't help but catch. If the Faculty of Environmental Design is today an accomplishment of any note, it is in no small measure one of Dr. Cragg's accomplishments. .. Accomplishments in the university world are customarily measured by one's rate and quantity of output of academic papers and books. Dr. Cragg produced his fair share; but he long maintained that this kind of accounting did not produce, ipso facto, discovery or mature science, or for that matter the kind of expansive knowledge, insights and development of cultural attitudes that were so critically important to the betterment of humankind and the nurturing of ecosystems. Several high honours came to Dr. Cragg-like the Queen's Jubilee Medal ...Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Biology ...Commonwealth Prestige Fellowship. Jim cherished these and other honours, but he was always uncomfortable in the act of receiving them. From early on, Dr. Cragg had conceived and crafted his engagements in scientific research in a global, deeply-humanist and evolutionary perspective; and consequently the honours he received were, in his judgment, far outweighed in his own personal accounting by the countless assignments and scientific committee appointments he was invited to take in Canada, in countries all over the world, and in international bodies. Each small piece of research, each project he undertook or convened or managed, Jim would place it for you in the context of that larger research enterprise, Environment and the future condition of Humankind. These national and international assignments were all part of a crafted development-personal and intellectual, cultural, and scientific. Among these in the period of the mid 1960s to late 1970s alone, there were assignments to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, to UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme, and many advisory roles with Canadian government departments, and research and conservation institutions. They culminated in Dr. Cragg's major role, beginning in 1969, as a convenor and editor of one of the International Biological Programme's more capacious research programmes, "Productivity of Terrestrial Communities". The work went on for some eight years; near the beginning of it he suffered a heart attack; and when the time came for Jim to write the Prefaces for the several, distinctive "Synthesis" volumes, his capacities were reduced, and he was visited by further adversities. I hope that with a few short quotations from these last of his writings, l can portray something about Dr. Cragg that will suggest why he was so loved and respected. What especially appeals in these essays are the marks of Jim's humanity ...his wisdom ...his humour. In the Grasslands 'Synthesis' Preface, Dr. Cragg observed, "Whilst the basic approaches to scientific discovery may appear universal, the degree of universality tends to be exaggerated and this is certainly the case in a diverse and very often diffuse subject such as ecology." Ecology, he reminds us, remains a highly personalized science: "...ecologists reflect the properties of the ecosystems in which they have grown and matured. All schools of ecology are strongly influenced by a genius loci that goes back to the local landscape" Nowhere else in the IBP [Terrestrial Productivity programme] was the 'ecologist-locale' link more in evidence ...On many occasions the energy expended in arguments on aims, methods and significance of results appeared to be approaching an explosion level, but compensating control systems, usually in the form of good humour, succeeded in keeping the 'reactors' below the critical point of disintegration. And when the two team leaders for one of the projects reports that their discussions have been many and prolonged but nonetheless, "the outcome was an understanding rather than a compromise", Dr. Cragg wrily comments: "It can certainly be said that discussions within the grasslands theme were many and prolonged". In another Preface, he points out that granivorous birds are a world-wide occurrence, that the study of them in their man-made ecosystems was "a matter of urgency and required international cooperation" because these. birds are associated with man's food crop. As in all of the many Prefaces that he wrote for the IBP research projects, his account and appraisal of the scientific enterprise is apportioned within that large and sweet, humanist compass of his. The notion that the scientific enterprise of ecology and environment is vitally dependent on globally, multilateral cooperative institutions was not one of the orthodoxies of the mid 1970s. But there is more to it, as Dr. Cragg hints in a modest, un-sentimental prose in the final sentences: "Apart from the scientific impact, IBP has provided scientists with many opportunities to become familiar with other cultures and other points of view. In this regard, those who were present at the final editorial meeting of the Granivorous Birds Theme will long remember one of Czechoslovakia's scientists, giving us a recital which included selections from Dvorak and Chopin, on a violin constructed by one of the staff of the Polish Research Station from wood grown in the grounds of the station." To me, those few lines convey more than a reminiscence of convivial colleagueship. When I first read them, l could see Jim sitting among us at those 'ever-so-serious' Faculty meetings of ours, imparting wisdom ....and bringing a wholesome perspective to bear on our conceits, and on our hotly divided views about the values and methods and projects to be deployed for advancing environmental science. The subtlety of these final lines are quintessentially Jim Cragg. That humanist preoccupation and that impish spirit of his are nestled into a scientific report, reminding an international community of scientists that granivorous birds may well be important for terrestrial productivity and our food supply, but it will be equally important to us that birds continue to sing ...and that human beings making music together may be something of a precondition for making good science. I don't think it would be stretching it to say: Jim was telling us there is wonderful and even more fruitful discovery to be made when the enterprise of environmental science is motivated, seen and experienced through a connectedness with the humanist imagination, with the diversity of cultural expression throughout the world, with an artful as much as technical approach to practice... and when we can connect all this even further with the art of living affirmatively, joyfully ...and for the enrichment of the lives of others. And it was not incidental that Jim should have noted the violin was crafted ...not by the scientists, but by a humble member of the staff; and the wood for it was taken from a forest that has been preserved and cultivated for nearly three centuries. If Jim was not in fact saying all this, then I will happily attribute it to him, without fear of conscience ...for this would be, in the sum of his accomplishments, the person of Dr. Cragg that I knew and shall remember.

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