Laurie Dianne Murison

Laurie Dianne Murison, Director, Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station passed away peacefully on January 3, 2021 at the Saint John Regional Hospital. She was 61. The University of New Brunswick will award her an Honorary Ph.D. this month.

Laurie has been co-director of the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station for many years. She created the Gaskin Memorial Museum in four rooms of the house in North Head, with hundreds of specimens and educational materials. This museum receives thousands of visitors a year. She curated the Gaskin Moth & Butterfly Collection to the Smithsonian Institution.

Graduate students from U. of Guelph have come to the research station since 1981 to work on theses and investigate a wide range of subjects. Laurie assisted with research, conducted her own studies, both at the university level, and with Governments of Canada and New Brunswick. She coordinated many projects to protect habitats, individual species and to save injured birds and animals wherever possible. She flew aerial census surveys of Right Whales of the Bay of Fundy, and cooperated with research of Grey Whales at Bamfield Research Station, and Bowhead Whales at Isabella Bay with Kerry Finley an expert of the isolated eastern arctic population. Laurie travelled to the U.K. as a biology expert with a government of NB trade mission. When her study demonstrated that Right Whale mortality was connected to a specific geographic area in the middle of the shipping lane, she proposed that the shipping lane be moved. This seems easy but required agreement by many agencies and levels of government in both Canada and the United States and submission of a proposal to the International Law of the Sea Convention who govern changes to shipping regulations. By unanimous approval (167 countries), signatories agreed to move the shipping lane 7 km. to reduce mortality. The whales were protected and began having nearly 100 new calves over the next decade. This increased their population by almost one third. Others were quick to take credit for her ideas and she seldom took credit. GMWSRS also worked to save entangled and injured birds and marine mammals and place them in recovery facilities. 

Laurie taught local high school students, biology graduates and elder hostel visitors. She gave several courses at St. Andrews University, and many lectures and slide shows. Her commitment to education included creating and installing weatherproof educational panels along hiking trails. She hauled materials for the paths, painted buildings and created benches and memorial decks around Swallowtail lighthouse. Her commitment extended to sitting on the board of directors of the Grand Manan Museum, and the restoration of a number of historic buildings: Swallowtail Lighthouse, the Light Keepers duplex, the Winch house, and the elevated timber walkway and the schoolhouse near the Grand Manan Museum.

She was a prolific fundraiser who made many projects possible. A fitting legacy to her tremendous energy, skill and wishes should be that those who knew her continue her many positive projects, supporting the GMWSRS, educational programs with the Grand Manan Museum, maintenance of the trails and light keepers house, and lighthouse, and assist her devoted and loving husband, Ken Ingersoll as volunteer light keeper for the five remaining lighthouses on the island.

Laurie is survived by her loving husband of 30 years, Ken Ingersoll of North Head, one brother Tom Murison (Deborah Cohen) of Oakville, ON; Ken’s parents, Eugene and Barbara Ingersoll, her sister-in-law Joanne Brown; brother-in-law Jarred Ingersoll; niece Rachel, nephews Ben, and Cole, and too many friends to mention. Laurie is predeceased by her parents, James and Marion (Shewell) Murison.

There will be on visitation or funeral service at this time. There will be a celebration of life for Laurie when family and friends can gather. 

For those who wish, a donation in Laurie’s memory can be made to Swallowtail Light Keepers Society, Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station, Charlotte County Cancer Society, or to the charity of the donor’s choice. Arrangements are in care of Ells Funeral Home Inc., 1199 Route 776, Grand Manan, NB E5G 1G2. Condolences, messages of sympathy may also be sent to www.ells.ca or (506)662-3116.