John Douglas (Jack) Gregson passed away peacefully at his home in Kamloops British Columbia, Canada. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, their five children, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

            Jack was born near Red Deer Alberta. He developed an early passion for butterflies and, as a teenager, had amassed an impressive collection. He earned his B.A. at the University of British Columbia (1934), and his M.Sc. in Medical Entomology from the University of Alberta (1936), with a thesis entitled: “A Preliminary Study of Tick and Host in Relation to Western Canadian Tick-borne Diseaeses”. It's a wonderful historical document, not only because of its broad scientific scope, but also for some exquisite diagrams, hand-drawn and coloured by Jack.

            Following his M.Sc., Jack took up a position in the Veterinary and Medical Entomology labs of the Canada Department of Agriculture (now Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) in Kamloops, where he spent his whole career, serving as the lab's Director from 1944 to his retirement in 1971. His interest in ticks was very broad, including feeding dynamics, host immunity (publishing a bare 3 years after Trager's classical paper of 19391), taxonomy, natural history, morphology/histology and tick paralysis. It was his interest in tick paralysis associated with the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni, which led him to an observation in 1967 that helped solve a long-time puzzle of tick physiology. Although it had been known for at least two decades that ticks concentrate their blood meal by excretion of excess fluid, the route of this excretion remained an enigma, because most ticks do not excrete urine during and immediately after the feeding period as do blood-sucking insects. It was his observations on tick mouthparts attached to everted hamster cheek pouches that led him to propose salivation as the mechanism of blood meal concentration2. This hypothesis was confirmed experimentally by Roger Tatchell, also in 19673 which, in turn, formed the foundation of new research directions in tick physiology.

Jack was one of those remarkably talented and self-reliant people who seem to be able to do everything. In addition to building their house in the 1940s, and landscaping their extensive grounds, he was also a keen naturalist, photographer and artist. Some years ago their property was designated a "Heritage Garden site" in Kamloops, and it is, perhaps, a taste of what paradise might be like; for years it has been a favoured venue where newly married couples are formally photographed. In 1936 he established the Kamloops Outdoor Club, and in 1970 the Kamloops Naturalist Club. The many alpine trips that he led in remote areas of British Columbia and beyond served as inspiration for his landscape oil paintings, some of which have been displayed in the Vancouver and Kamloops Art Galleries.

Jack has been a ‘local hero’ in Kamloops. He spearheaded the development of the McArthur Island Waterway Park in 1980, and a butterfly garden in that park in 1994. The bicycle path there is named "The Jack Gregson Trail", and he was named a freeman of the city of Kamloops in 1990. Among numerous local and Canadian provincial awards he received over the years, in 2000, Jack was awarded an Honourary Doctor of Letters degree from the University College of the Cariboo. Fittingly, a tick from Eastern Canada has been named after him: Ixodes gregsoni4.

I feel most privileged to have known Jack since my PhD years at the University of British Columbia, when he was an inspiration to my research program on tick salivary gland physiology. I am honoured to have been welcomed in Jack and Barbara’s home frequently since then, and to have been blessed with the warmest expressions of their hospitality.

It is appropriate that Jack should have the last word here. His tireless efforts in environmental advocacy over the years should remind us all of our responsibility, as biologists, to the preservation of our natural heritage, wherever we live in the world. Once, when a local group claimed the right to develop a ski village because they "owned" the land, Jack composed the following poem, which is reprinted here from the Proceedings of the 4^th International Conference on Ticks and Tick-borne Pathogens (TTP 4)5, with kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.

 

Territorial Claims

(J.D. Gregson)

 

Said a cricket to an ice-bug as they sat on Mt. Paul's slide,

"Don't you love my rocky talus - it's the topmost of my pride".

"But yours it's not", the ancient bug reprovingly replied,

"Three hundred million years I've lived, and you have just arrived."

 

Said an eagle to a ground-squirrel as it soared o'er peaks sublime,

"Be careful how you dig the earth and spoil this land of mine."

But the rodent queried rightly, as the best he could define -

"You birds were not around at all when mammals had their time."

 

The moral of this issue is, as far as I can see,

This land belongs to none of us, not even you and me!

We're all just lucky tenants on an earth that came to be.

 

Signed: Grylloblatta, the Ice-bug