In war and peace, his life was shaped by birds
A childhood passion led ornithology, conservation pioneer J. Bruce Falls to his near-century-long love for nature
Growing up, J. Bruce Falls’s childhood fascination with birds turned into field expeditions in High Park, where the 12-year-old would spend hours taking notes in his bird book. As a teen, he and a friend pedalled their bicycles from Vaughan to Long Point — approximately 350 kilometres round trip — to go birding.
It was an auspicious start for the ornithology and conservation pioneer’s near-century-long love affair with nature — a relationship that led him to co-found the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Birds Canada. Falls died April 27 at age 100.
“In the 1930s, his was an unusual hobby,” said Falls’ son, Stephen Falls. “He took it to an elite level that I cannot match. Through strategizing and skill, he often saw about 150 species in a 24-hour period for his birdathons, which is about the number I get in a good year.”
A professor in the faculty of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and a recipient of the Order of Canada, Falls “was the foremost leader in conservation and bird studies in Canada of his generation,” said John Riley, a former Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) chief science officer, national director of conservation strategies and a friend of Falls for more than 45 years.
Born James Bruce Falls, on Dec. 18, 1923, in Toronto to Orville Mervin Falls, a civil engineer who worked for the Borough of York, and the former Hazel Ina Ranney, a stay-at-home mother, Falls’ sister, Barbara was five years his junior.
Orville Falls was an avid fisherman who would often take his son on fishing trips. “As a child, doctors thought he had a weak heart, so he was excused from gym class,” said Stephen Falls of his father, “although he was remarkably fit most of his life.” At 92, Falls would hike, Stephen said, “through deep snow for hours with no sign of fatigue.”
The president of the nature club at Vaughan Road Collegiate Institute, Falls entered U of T to study biology in 1942, but joined the RCAF as an aircraftman the following year. “Most of his stories about his time in the air force were related to going on birding expeditions on his time off,” said Stephen.
After the Second World War, he resumed his studies and worked jobs conducting fish surveys in rivers of southwestern Ontario, and as a naturalist in Algonquin Park, where he was known for singing — an interest from his high school and university glee club years — the music of Gilbert and Sullivan at the camp.
He graduated in 1948 and after earning a PhD in zoology from U of T in 1953, he attended Oxford University as a post-doctoral fellow.
He returned to U of T in 1954 to teach ecology. A favourite and memorable professor, Falls visited each of his PhD students at least once in each research season. “For students and naturalists, Bruce was an inspiration,” said Riley. He remained at U of T until his retirement in 1989, but was an active professor emeritus for many years after that, keeping an office at U of T.
Internationally recognized for his ornithological research — a field in which he published more than 100 scientific papers — Falls pioneered playback techniques for studying songbirds, said Stephen, to study the function of birdsong in territoriality, technique that continues to be widely used in studies of bird and animal communication.
Winning prestigious awards at provincial, national and international levels (Falls was invested as a member of the Order of Canada in 2017) he also received accolades for his work outside academia, in service to numerous conservation and natural history societies.
In 1962, Falls — president and longtime director of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (now Ontario Nature), which conserves natural areas for the benefit of nature and the species they sustain — and his co-members founded the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
In the 1970s, Falls created his own nature reserve in Apsley in the Kawarthas. Stephen recalled wonderful times up in Apsley. The family was “either in the woods or at the lake most weekends and dad’s holidays throughout the year,” he said. “Our parents did censuses of the plants and animal life there. We would go fishing and swimming, but also spend a lot more time in the woods on nature hikes than most of the cottagers. Some visitors wondered why we would spend a beautiful day in a buggy swamp when we could be swimming, but it seemed natural to me, having grown up doing it. Fascinating places, swamps, but definitely an acquired taste.”
For all of Falls’ achievements, Riley called him “a soft-spoken gentleman” who, with his wife and research partner Ann Holmes, raised a close-knit family. The couple met when Falls taught a field course in Algonquin Park, and Ann was a first-year biology student. They married in 1952 and settled in Don Mills, raising three children: Kathryn, Robert and Stephen.
“They were perhaps the most compatible couple I’ve ever known, without a harsh word between them in their 69 years together,” said Stephen. “A very harmonious and loving family life.”
Falls died last month at his Toronto home of nearly 70 years. He is survived by three children and two grandchildren.
“Dr. Bruce Falls was a pioneer and true force for nature,” said Nature Conservancy of Canada president and CEO Catherine Grenier. “He taught us all to cherish our natural world.”