Diario del proyecto In Her Footsteps: the Plants of Kate Crooks

In an article by Queen's Park Reporter Jeff Gray, The Globe and Mail reports that Ontario's Environment Ministry "automatically" approves permits for developers that harm at-risk species.

“The Ministry is essentially facilitating development rather than protecting species at risk,” says Ontario's Auditor General (who took on the portfolio of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, after the current provincial government dissolved the Office of the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario in 2018).

The Auditor General reports that the ministry’s species-at-risk advisory committee “is now dominated by industry representatives” after six members were appointed in 2019 and 2020 “without the standard screening and recommendation process.”

Kate Crooks worked in the communities of Cambridge, London, St. Thomas, and Hamilton, gathering plants in the woods, marshes and meadows of Canada’s Carolinian ecozone. Some of the species she recorded (such as Cylindrical Blazing Star) are endangered or vulnerable in Ontario, while one (Sabatia angularis) is now extinct in this province.

Read more:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-automatically-approves-permits-for-developers-that-harm-at/

The Botanical Society of Canada’s “Lady Members” produced floral crafts and poetry, and taste-tested new varieties of squash. Kate Crooks, however, oriented herself as a scientist, creating an award-winning herbarium of native and introduced species that was exhibited at home and abroad.

Crooks worked in the communities of Cambridge, London, St. Thomas, and Hamilton, gathering plants in the woods, marshes and meadows of Canada’s Carolinian ecozone. While some of the species she recorded (such as Cylindrical Blazing Star) are endangered or vulnerable in Ontario, many others can be found today, on either side of the Niagara Escarpment. These include native plants such as Fringed Polygala, Prickly Ash, and Great White Trillium.

Read my latest article on Crooks' legacy, which connects her work in what is now Ontario's Greenbelt region, with the current provincial government's plans to build a major new highway in the GTA.

https://niche-canada.org/2021/08/17/competing-visions-for-ontarios-greenbelt/

This weekend, I'll be speaking about Kate Crooks and her Ontario flora at the 4th World Congress of Psychogeography (#4WCOP21)! My free, virtual talk begins at 12.15 pm EDT / 17.15 BST on Sunday, September 5, and describes my attempt to piece Crooks' lost herbarium back together, plant-by-plant. I'll also share two take-home activities; making your own herbarium, and sunprinting; a photography technique similar to the cyanotype process. For fans of environmental history, women in STEAM, botany, and wildflowers!

Register online: https://www.4wcop.org

Hi, my name is Anna Soper! I've created this project to capture current observations of species collected by Catharine McGill (Kate) Crooks in 1859-1865. Crooks was a member of the Botanical Society of Canada, and, with her brother-in-law, published a list of roughly 500 plants in southwestern Ontario! Her specimen collection was displayed in the Canadian pavilion at the 1862 International Exhibition in London, England. Curiously, these specimens do not appear to have survived the many years since her premature death, in 1871. Today, there is one known specimen attributed to Kate Crooks; a single cutting of Sabatia angularis, held at McGill University Herbarium.

You can read more about Crooks' life and work in my story for Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/botanist-ontario-kate-crooks. And check out my website, www.annasoper.ca.