Messages of Sympathy

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I just want to express my sympathy over your loss. I knew Don for many years although we only met intermittently - mostly at conferences, and occasionally when he visited Aberdeen. A couple of months back I visited Montreal and Don was going to come over and meet, but he had a cold and couldn't make it. I so wish now that he had done, or that I had made to effort to go over to Sherbrooke to see him.

I will really miss his fun style and his great critical eye.

He will be a great loss to science.

With deepest sympathy.

John Speakman
Director Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences (IBES) Zoology, University of Aberdeen, UK 

I first met Don over email about a dozen years ago when I was doing field work in the Yukon and I wrote him to inquire about doing a PhD under his co-supervision. And it was again by email while doing field work in the Yukon that I learned of Don’s death. Everything that has happened to me in the twelve years between those two emails has, one way or another, been a result of Don’s influence. From my PhD thesis, a post doc overseas, obtaining an academic position, my developing research program, and even why I was back in the Yukon doing field work, all can be traced back to opportunities, encouragement, and guidance Don has given me. I will miss his critical mind, his first principles intuition about how animals work, and his determined support of early career researchers. I will miss the after hours times and places where Don contributed so much to so many conversations. Don’s research contributions will continue to grow through the many students and colleagues he has influenced. I offer my sincere condolences to Don’s family, friends and colleagues.

Murray Humphries
Associate Professor
McGill University

It is with great sadness that I heard about the death of Don Thomas.   I had my most contact with Don at the beginning of my career in Sherbrooke when the entire department shared the coffee room. Don and I had many coffee-break research discussions in a mixture of French and English that often left our listeners perplexed.  The subjects of our musings could range from the possibility that human obesity was pre-programmed to the development of fluorescent signatures for bird proteins.  Many times the board was covered with undecipherable scrawls as Don attempted to explain the wonders of population physiology to me.  His imagination could always take an idea to new heights and we often discussed writing a crazy grant application together, but never did. Don’s enthusiasm was contagious, and his students learned that curiosity and imagination can turn what at first appears to be a rather routine question into something interesting and relevant.

As Dean, Don attacked his job with his usual vigor but had the wisdom to only change things that could be changed, and I think that he learned to tolerate what could not. Don made his mark on science, on the faculty and on his students.

Sheila and I, with our sons Glenn and Keith wish to extend our deepest sympathies you Marie-Helene and all your family and friends.

Brian Talbot
Département de biologie
Université de Sherbrooke

Subsequently I collaborated on research projects, invited him to give talks, had him to Regina as a external examiner and caught up with him at conferences, most recently last August in Namibia.  It was a great pleasure to interact with him under all circumstances. 

I will always remember funny stories and adventures in the field.  He was always able in an easy way to laugh at his own misfortunes and brain cramps; something we could all learn from.  It made it so easy to be around him. 

I am profoundly sorry for his family, his students, the institution and for Science in general.  We have lost a wonderful person. 

Mark Brigham
Professor and Head
Biology – University of Regina

I am sorry that I could not write this note in memory of Don in French and that was something that he would always gave me hell about telling me how could I possibly live in a country like Canada and not speak French?  Don loved Québec and his life in that special place and he could never understand why anyone would live anywhere else (after 30 years of Toronto I finally see his wisdom).

I met Don as a graduate student working with Brock Fenton at Carleton University back in the mid-70s and with Robert Barclay and Gary Bell we were "les enfants terribles" of the Biology department (it's hard to imagine how Brock kept his job with us running around).  I think the first day I met Don we started debating about something or other. Don would never let a suspicious comment go by without tackling it and God help you if you have any mistakes in your logic.  But that was one of the many things I liked about Don, he was as honest and sincere a friend as I have never known.  Our friendship was always there although a bit in hibernation until he learned about medical problems I was having and then he was all over me sending books and inviting me and Michelle to come down and spend time with he and Marie-Hélène to their beautiful house and wonderful garden. In a way he became a brother I never had, calling me every week to see how I was going and just generally being there to talk.

Don and I followed each other's careers for 30 years and spent some very high quality time together in various places around the world, especially the island of Moorea in French Polynesia where he studied the thermal behaviour of "tupa", the common land crab.  This study animal only became necessary once Don has learned that all of the coconut crabs that he originally planned to study had been eaten about 100 years ago.  But again that was Don, finding a way to get things done.  I saw Don just two weeks before he left for Corsica when he and Marie were spending some time in a little hotel on the windy Atlantic coast in Maine.  We all walked in the cool morning breeze along the beach, bought our fresh caught fish and came home and cooked our meal and drank way too much good wine and just enjoyed the fact that good friends are so precious and so rare.  Now I wish I had Don here to tell him that but he probably knew, he was pretty smart that way.

I miss you, Don.

James Fullard

Colleagues, friends and family of Don Thomas,

Don and I went to the same high school in Montreal. As with so many things, however, he was ahead of me (one grade) and we thus did not interact to any great extent. I re-encountered Don at a dinner and croquet match held at our graduate supervisor's house. I had just started my MSc with Brock Fenton and when I walked in to his house, Don and I looked at each other and said, "I know you, where from?". I started my research that fall knowing essentially nothing about bats. Although Brock got me started, it was working with Don at the Renfrew mine, living in a tent trailer, that was my real introduction to bats and field research. Don's enthusiasm and critical approach was a great model to follow. I also recall Don's yellow Datsun, which had a propenstity for hitting deer and being rear-ended by people who failed to stop at red lights! The Fenton lab at that time was a highly stimulating place to be...with James Fullard, Don Thomas and later Gary Bell, we would sit around the lab and bounce weird ideas off each other. Every lunch we would migrate to Brock's office and bounce those ideas off him, or just chat about the latest paper (the energetics of tethered chickens, comes to mind).

Don went off to Aberdeen and Ivory Coast to do his PhD, but he and I kept in touch, we published several papers together, and we worked with James Fullard on a memorable field trip to Atiu in the Cook islands. On the island, where we were studying swiftlets, we travelled around on motor scooters. As we motored around one day, Don spied a beautiful coconut that crashed to the ground just off the road beside us. He screeched to a stop and rushed over to pick it up, delighted that we would have coconut milk with our rum that night. It was then that he was confronted, politely, by the man who had just cut the coconut out of the tree and was shimmying down the trunk to collect it! Don was suitably embarrassed while James and I roared with laughter.

Although we continued to communicate electronically, our face-to-face interactions were few over the last number of years. However, last August, we reconnected in Namibia at the hibernation conference. Don was as enthusiastic, critical, and insightful as ever. As before, we bounced ideas off each other and I came away with new ideas and a renewed admiration for Don's energy.

Science lost an important mind last week, and I suspect Sherbrooke lost a dedicated and thoughtful administrator. We all lost a friend and colleague far too soon.

Robert M.R. Barclay
Biological Sciences
University of Calgary