I thought I’d kick off my contribution to the Tyre Family
Chronicles by describing all the years in between 1988, when my father last
wrote about me, and 1993, when I met Brigitte. That’s when my life actually
started, so this post ought to be quite short!
Pretty much the only thing I did between 1988 and 1991 was
go to school – the Zoology program at the University of Alberta to be precise. In
the summer of 1989 I worked at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans research
station at Resolute Bay, Northwest Territories. I was a research assistant for
a PhD student working on Arctic Cod, and spent a substantial proportion of my
time trying to feed juvenile cod by squirting copepods in front of their noses
with an eyedropper. Having had my fill of the icy north, I spent the next 3
summers working for a professor in the high deserts of Utah – about as
different a climate as you can imagine. There I spent hours (and hours)
examining the flowers of Yucca plants for the tiny marks left by female Yucca
Moths when they lay their eggs. I also made my first “scientific discovery”:
not all Yucca Moths pay back their host plants by delivering pollen to the
flower, as they were thought to do. This lead to my first scientific article,
and I was hooked!
In the fall of 1991 I left Edmonton to start studying for my
Masters of Science degree at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. My
girlfriend at the time was starting at the University of Victoria, so as a side
benefit I got to see a lot more of the Tyre family in both Vancouver and
Victoria. I must have spent at least 6 weeks of 1991 and 1992 sitting on the
bus and ferry. I had a pretty decent apartment for the first time in my life,
and enjoyed living on my own very much.
Not too much though, so when I met Brigitte in 1993 we moved
in together pretty quickly. Brigitte came over to work in my supervisor’s lab
for 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow, having just finished her Doctorate in
Germany. In January 1994 I completed my MSc, and returned to Edmonton to start
working as a research technician for my old boss John Addicott at the
University of Alberta. After trying a long distance relationship for several
months, and spending a lot of time in airplanes between Edmonton and Vancouver,
I got permission to work from Vancouver and stayed put there for the remainder
of Brigitte’s postdoctoral fellowship.
