By Judith Enright
The Louise de Kiriline Lawrence fonds housed at Library and Archives Canada (LAC), is rich in content and diverse in media. It was donated to LAC in the 1980s by Mrs. Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and details a life that any researcher would be hard-pressed to categorize.
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (neé Flach) was born in Sweden in 1894 into a wealthy and well connected family. She was extremely well educated and fluent in five languages. She chose nursing as a profession and joined the Red Cross to work in Denmark at a prisoner-of-war exchange camp. It was here that she nursed back to health then married Gleb de Kiriline, a wounded Russian officer. The two then moved to live and work in northern Russia. Gleb de Kiriline went missing after the Bolshevik revolution and Louise spent four years in a futile search to find him.
Louise and Gleb de Kiriline (MIKAN 3722648)
In 1927, Louise immigrated to Canada where she worked as a Red Cross nurse in Northern Ontario. She became the head nurse to the Dionne quintuplets and played a crucial role in their survival during the first year of their lives. Due to the notoriety of the Quints, Louise wrote a series of articles for Chatelaine magazine chronicling her experiences with the children and their family. She retired from nursing in 1935.
Louise married Leonard Lawrence in 1939. While her new husband was overseas during World War II, Louise devoted herself exclusively to nature studies and nature writing, particularly ornithology.
De Kiriline Lawrence conducted the majority of her nature studies and nature writing from her property on Pimisi Bay, in Northern Ontario. It was here, while living in a log cabin, that she began banding birds, keeping diaries, creating sketchbooks and writing hundreds of articles for various nature publications along with several books including her autobiography entitled Another Winter, Another Spring: A Love Remembered.
Louise (in the middle) with friends (MIKAN 3951807)
LAC is now the guardian of the Louise de Kiriline Lawrence fonds. It includes material pertaining to wildlife studies, bird data and illustrations along with ornithological reports, correspondence both personal and professional, book and periodical notes and manuscripts along with family papers. Also included are over one hundred drawings, over 700 photographs, audio material, award medals, wood blocks and a few lithographs as well as material regarding her life in Sweden and Russia.
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence died in 1992.
Judith Enright is an archival assistant in the Aboriginal and Social Affairs Section of the Private Archives Branch of Library and Archives Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Blog 
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Good article Judy. I am now the head librarian in Earlton (since March 2015). I enjoy it very much!
I’m pretty sure that Louise is the middle person in that second photo, not the one on the right. Louise fans might also be interested to know that a historic plaque has just been erected in her honour in Pimisi Lake Park near Rutherglen, Ontario. The plaque is just a few hundred metres from the cabin where Louise lived, wrote and studied nature for more than 50 years.
Thank you for your comment. The correction has been made.
Hello, Where can I find the items that Louise donated? She was my aunt, and I am interested in looking through them. Thank you
Hello Ms. Ferguson,
I am forwarding your question to the archival assistant who wrote the blog. She will be in touch with you shortly to help you with your question. In the meantime, if you go to this link: http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/ourl/res.php?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_tim=2017-04-11T13%3A23%3A47Z&url_ctx_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=103901&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fcollectionscanada.gc.ca%3Apam&lang=eng, you can read a list of the items that are in her collection.
Dear Ms Ferguson:
I am interested, as I am the nephew of Leonard Lawrence, how your relationship is in the family.
Sincerely, Len Grover MD.
Dear Dr. Grover,
My name is Steve Pitt. I live on Lake Talon about 2 miles as-the-stick floats upstream from where Louise and Len lived on Pimisi Bay. I wrote articles about Louise de Kiriline Lawrence for various magazines but while Louise’s life is well documented, I have found frustratingly little information about your Uncle Leonard. In her recently published book about LdKL, Woman Watching, author Merilyn Simonds mentions how much Len helped Louise in her bird studies when he returned from the war, but there is very little information about him other than he was there – being handy. As a nosy writer, I hate blank pages. If I sent you my e-mail, would you be willing to tell me a little more about your uncle?
regards, Steve