Margaret Atwood gives $1 million to Western for a bird research chair in Graeme Gibson’s name

Margaret Atwood has given $1 million to Western to create the Graeme Gibson Chair in Avian Biology in memory of her partner. Gibson, a writer and lifelong naturalist who earned a Western arts degree (BA’58), died in 2019 at 85. The chair is meant to deepen understanding of how birds move, behave and adapt in a changing environment.

Once appointed, the chairholder will join the biology department in the Faculty of Science and the Centre for Animals on the Move, with access to the Advanced Facility for Avian Research. That facility houses the world’s only hypobaric climatic wind tunnel designed for bird flight. Atwood pointed to its link with the Pelee Island Bird Observatory, which she and Gibson co-founded in 2003.

Gibson wrote The Bedside Book of Birds and four novels, and his debut, Five Legs, drew on his own student days at Western. He joined the Order of Canada in 1992 and shared the Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s 2015 Gold Medal with Atwood. She said simply, “Graeme would be very pleased.”