|
Archives 2006 - 2007>
“Enhanced Woodland”
17 Feb 2007
Joe, our speaker on “Enhanced Woodland” in March 2007, is well known to all of us as our long time Programme Chair and a past President (1999-2001) of our Society. What may not be so well known is that Joe was born in Chicago, a place that conjures up visions of cold winters, windy streets and gun-toting hoodlums, rather than gentle gardening enthusiasts. Fortunately Joe comes from a good side of Society, inheriting a love of plants from his father whose original business sign “Fred Ronsley Florist” can still be seen on Ohio Street, or while viewing the sites of Chicago from the Chicago River.
Plants have been good to Joe, contributing to his high school and university education – and Joe has been good to plants. A year and a half in the US Army in Japan provided profoundly valuable opportunities for him to experience the subtleties of the gardening culture of that country. He managed the family business in the late ‘50s before returning to Northwestern University in Illinois to complete his Ph.D. thesis in 1966 – not in a horticultural field but on the literature of 20th century authors.
Apart from a two-year interlude at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Joe’s academic home (1965-1994) has been at McGill University in Montreal as Professor of English. His scholarly reaches have taken him to many countries – Japan, New Zealand, Europe, Britain, Ireland – where fortuitous links and friendships established with gardeners and organizations in these countries have served the VRS well, as sources of overseas experts for our Speaker’s Programme. Joe’s networking abroad has undoubtedly expanded our membership and enhanced our international reputation.
Montreal, it might be said, is probably as challenging to the gardener as Chicago. Undaunted, Joe and Joanne’s Montreal garden was developed from 1969 onwards, with the furnace room serving as a comfortable propagating room for seedlings and cuttings. As testimony to his enthusiasm for plants, Joe is a Founding Member of the Rhododendron Society of Canada, and, since the early ‘70s, a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, the Vancouver Rhododendron Society, the Alpine Garden Society of BC, and the International Dendrology Society (Life Member).
Joe Ronsley
|