On 26 January 1987 Lorraine Allison died after a long battle with cancer. Lorraine was 40 years old. She leaves a husband, Bill Elton, and a six-year-old son, Boyd.

 Lorraine was a wildlife biologist, a rancher, a wife, and a proud and devoted mother. She was also my friend. We first met in 1977 when Doug Pimlott commissioned her to write a paper on the then current issues surrounding caribou management for CARC's Second National Workshop on People, Resources, and the Environment North of 60°. Doug had supervised Lorraine's Master's thesis at the University of Toronto, on the denning behaviour of the red fox in Denali National Park in Alaska, and had a high regard for her work. Lorraine tested my skills as an editor to the fullest because she took justifiable pride in the attention to detail and scrupulous accuracy that she brought to her work, and she bluntly demanded a full accounting of the reasons for all changes; more than once, my presumptuous revisions proved to be misleading or incorrect, and we reverted to her original text.

 Lorraine was proud of her own professionalism, yet she could also be delightfully self-deprecatory. In a letter to me in 1979, she mocked herself for any pretensions at having completed "another definitive work". On a later occasion, she compared people's attitudes toward their own written work with their attitude toward wildlife: "It's just like wildlife we're all experts!"

 One of Lorraine's many attractive qualities was that iconoclastic response to "the experts". She was always questioning, rigorous in her scrutiny of "received opinion" - whether that opinion related to wildlife management, corral building, or child rearing practices! She was generous in her praise of those who did quality work and ruthless in her denunciation of those who did not. She neither feared nor was deterred by individual or institution when fighting for something she believed in.

 Lorraine was an incredibly strong individual. She did solo field work in remote areas of Alaska, northern Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Yukon at a time when few if any women were so adventurous. She worked with Bill on their ranch in the Pincher Creek area of southwestern Alberta with the same strength and dedication. After a day spent building feedlots and corrals, she wryly reported in a letter to me that recent survey reports had confirmed farming to be the most stressful occupation in Alberta. Even when her disease was well advanced, she would still stride across the ranch that she loved with an energy that left one in awe.

 Lorraine Allison was a remarkable woman. She accomplished so much in so many areas: wilderness field work, ranching in rural Alberta, advocacy at environmental hearings often held in urban corporate centres, and a family that was immensely important in her life. Lorraine loved the natural world and she loved the North. Advocates for conservation have lost a valued friend and colleague.

 Janet Wright

 In Lorraine's memory, a scholarship tenable at a Canadian university is being established. John Bayly is accepting funds in trust and will provide an official receipt for income tax purposes to be issued within a year. Donations would be gratefully accepted, payable to: