Wilfred Borden Schofield (1927–2008)

Abstract

After a brief struggle with cancer, Dr. Wilfred (Wilf) Borden Schofield, 81, passed away peacefully on the morning of November 5, 2008, at Marion Hospice in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was preceded in death by his wife, Peggy, his parents and brothers, Donald and Eric. Wilf is survived by his daughters, Linda, Muriel and Pamela, his grandchildren, Aisha, Elise, Shayden and Kai, his sister, Vera, and brother-in-law, Turner, and nieces, nephews, cousins and many former students and colleagues. Wilf was born in Brooklyn Corner, Kings County, Nova Scotia on 19 July 1927 to Alethia May Borden and Gilbert Schofield. After high school he went on to Acadia University with the intention of becoming a high school teacher. His focus changed when John S. Erskine (the local bryologist) introduced him to botany and bryophytes. During his undergraduate years he collected both vascular plants and bryophytes while developing his passion for fieldwork. He graduated from Acadia University in 1950 with a B.A. and obtained a Class A Teacher’s License from Nova Scotia Normal College in 1951. For the next several years he taught high school geology in Nova Scotia. In 1954 he moved to Stanford University in California, and started graduate work under the guidance of William C. Steere. Not a person to choose an easy thesis topic he chose to work on the taxonomically difficult genus Hypnum. He focused on the species of Canada, Alaska and the northern latitudes. During the summer of 1955 Wilf joined Howard Crum as a field assistant and spent the summer collecting in the Canadian Rocky Mountain parks. He completed his thesis, The Relationships and Geographic Distribution of Canadian and Alaskan Species of Hypnum, and received his M.S. degree in 1956. During the summer of 1956 Wilf and Howard were joined by Lewis Anderson and Bill Steere and he collected both bryophytes and vascular plants in Fort Churchill, Manitoba. This trip resulted in one of his first published papers; ‘‘The salt marsh vegetation of Churchill, Manitoba, and its phytogeographic implications’’ which appeared in the Bulletin of the National Museum of Canada in 1959. While attending classes at Stanford, Wilf met Turner Bledsoe, a classmate who had a sister Margaret (Peggy) Irene Bledsoe. Peggy, an accomplished concert pianist and artist, completed her M.A. in music at Stanford. Mutual friends at Stanford introduced Wilf (the confirmed bachelor) to Peggy and they ‘‘hit it off.’’ They were married in the fall of 1956 after a one-month courtship. Howard Crum loved to tell how he went along on their honeymoon, which was a collecting trip. The young couple returned to Nova Scotia where Wilf spent the winter teaching high school. After he and Peggy spent the summer of 1957 doing fieldwork in the Yukon, they moved to Durham, North Carolina where Wilf started his Ph.D. under Henry J. Oosting at Duke University. While this was primarily an ecological study, his dissertation, The Ecotone between Spruce-fir and Deciduous Forest in the Great Smoky Mountains, included a strong bryophyte component. While at Duke he continued his love of bryology in the company of Lewis Anderson and various visiting bryologists. Many of those visiting bryologists, including Sinske Hattori, Hisa Ando, Zen Iwatsuki, Alan Mark and Helen Ramsay, became lifelong friends who hosted him and his family in their travels abroad. Upon completion of his dissertation in 1960, Wilf, with Peggy and their first daughter, Linda,