Woman, Watching

Starred review from February 28, 2022
Simonds (The Convict Lover) excels in this beautifully written and moving biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (1894–1992), a nature writer and distinguished Canadian ornithologist. Through a diligent analysis of Lawrence’s correspondence, scrapbooks, research notes, and book drafts, Simonds recreates both her subject’s inner life and considerable achievements. Lawrence was born in Sweden and served as a nurse for the Red Cross during WWI. She and her first husband, Gleb Kirilin, were imprisoned by the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war—Kirilin, a Russian military officer, didn’t survive, and when Lawrence was released, she immigrated to Canada, where she remarried and began keeping “meticulous records” of the birds she saw at her Ontario cabin. By the end of her first year she’d identified 73 species and had begun to write prolifically; she was eventually invited to join the prestigious (and male-dominated) American Ornithologists Union. Her nature writing received multiple awards, and she made crucial discoveries in the field of ornithology, setting a still-standing record for counting bird song and “pars the meaning of bird behaviour that scientists are only now proving to be true.” Simonds’s prose shines and brings the reader into the remarkable moments bird-watchers live for. This brilliant account does justice to a pioneering figure who merits wider recognition.

Starred review from June 1, 2022
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence was a watcher. For 50 years she kept meticulous records about the birds she saw, where they nested, and how successful they were while also running a bird-banding station. Living in the boreal forest of Ontario, Lawrence was a self-trained and dedicated ornithologist who wrote life histories of northern birds and published almost 100 papers in popular magazines and scientific journals. Author and birder Simonds lived nearby, met Lawrence, and was moved to write about her after Lawrence's death. Lawrence was a singular woman, born to Swedish gentry before she became a nurse with the Red Cross during WWI. She met a Russian POW who became her first husband, moved to Russia, then lost her husband to a Bolshevik prison. She subsequently emigrated to Canada, becoming a Red Cross outpost nurse and caring for the famous Dionne quintuplets. The observational skills and precise recordkeeping that helped keep the babies alive carried over to her years of bird observations, which she embarked on after her second husband left to fight in the WWII. Simonds' own birding and life story are woven into the narrative, adding to the addictive quality of this marvelous biography of a true pioneer of ornithology.

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