Obituary of Glennis Lewis
LEWIS: Dr. Glennis Mary Lewis passed away peacefully on February 1, 2026, at 74 years of age, with treasured friends at her side, after being well cared for in Palliative Care at the Brandon Regional Health Centre, in Manitoba. She will be lovingly remembered by her nieces, Tricia Connett (husband Curtis) and Vanessa Flavel (husband Marlin), her great-niece, Sela Flavel, and amongst many circles of friends throughout western and central Canada. She leaves her dog, Annie, and her cat, Winnie, in the care of their loving new parents.
Glennis was born into the third generation of Woodside Farm at Vandura (south of Wawota), Saskatchewan, which was settled by her grandfather, George Chambers Lewis from Bruce Peninsula, Ontario, in 1882, then passed to her father Joseph Edgar Lewis, and then to her brother Keith Edgar Lewis. Visiting the Wawota area and Bruce Peninsula to discover the extended branches of the family tree were of importance in her later years. She idolized her Aunt Mary Edith Lewis, a fiercely independent woman with a successful nursing career that included teaching and WWII service.
Nature was her passion, from childhood to late adulthood: biodiversity, insects, habitats, but mostly plants, birds, and grasslands. Ideally these were incorporated into her work, but this could never have the same effect as when she took leisure time to just go birding or botanizing, or for many days at a time to enjoy adventures out on grasslands in the west with her closest friends. For a change of scenery, she even explored the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories by guided excursion.
Her education and career were unique. Her love for plants and nature led her to pursue three degrees in botanical sciences, at Brandon University and University of Calgary. Her desire to have some control in environmental policy decision-making about resource extraction led her to pursue two law degrees, at University of Calgary and University of Ottawa. This combination allowed her to become a formidable contributor to environmental, social, and public health law and policy, through 32 years of work for law and consulting firms, the federal government, and federal and provincial environmental committees, including:
- Western Environmental and Social Trends (WEST)
- Ogilvie and Company
- National Energy Board Express Pipeline Project Joint Panel
- Lewis Consulting Ltd.
- Environment Canada Biodiversity Convention Office
- Health Canada Legislative Renewal Branch, Health Products and Foods Branch, and Office of the Chief Scientist
- Public Health Agency of Canada
- Manitoba Clean Environment Commission
- Impact Assessment Agency of Canada Technical Advisory Committee on Science and Knowledge.
Work like this resulted in her receiving the 2002 Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for outstanding and exemplary contribution to community or Canada as a whole.
Glennis was dedicated to making sure policy decisions were ethical and scientifically valid. She agonized over and finally submitted a dissenting opinion against her fellow National Energy Board panel members who approved the Express Pipeline construction from Hardisty, Alberta, to Wyoming, across many acres of native grassland, "...the evidence produced by the Applicant...is inadequate from both a legal and scientific perspective...to determine whether or not the Project will have significant adverse effects...". In more recent years, she dug into the strange and unfortunate exchanges leading up to the disruption of the small white lady slipper habitat in the southeast part of Brandon. In this past year, the unimaginative solution of destroying over 50 stately elm trees on 26th Street boulevards in Brandon to refurbish the road, sewer, and sidewalk, was among her last environmental heartaches, also shared by innumerable Brandonites.
Teaching during her educational years was primarily for income, but also to build skill in her areas of study: she took field assistant and teaching assistant jobs in biological and ecological sciences. When employed, she still taught on the side, for example, how and why to be a lawyer to prospective law students. And after retirement she chose to keep teaching and designing course material, to make sure students at Brandon University and Assiniboine Community College got a thorough understanding of policy, social and environmental considerations, and procedures, pertaining to environmental and cumulative affects assessments.
Glennis was very interested in the art of communication: clear writing and speaking, and being able to make compelling, factual, and justified arguments. To this end, she took workshops and self-learning about editing and writing. She was a peer reviewer for the Queen's Law Journal; peer reviewer, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of the Biodiversity journal; copy editor for two of the Flora of Saskatchewan volumes; and proofreader for the Birds of Saskatchewan book. Her pleasure in expressing her views and knowledge in writing and speech are proven with over three pages of a recent curriculum-vitae dedicated to selected titles of her most significant and various works.
With the exception of time dedicated to a non-profit crisis telephone line in the 1980s, nature guided most of Glennis' volunteerism. For example, she was a lead contact for the Oak Lake Important Bird Area (IBA), and conducted or participated in many bird surveys and plant bioblitzes. She took her bird data gathering very seriously as a citizen scientist. Even though she only really got started in the last ten years, at the time of her death, Glennis was among the top three eBird listers of the Brandon Area, and had a life list of around 260 species and almost 3000 completed checklists among all her surveys in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.
Glennis sat on various committees and boards in a volunteer capacity, such as Environmental Services Association of Alberta, The Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, City of Ottawa Environmental Advisory Committee, Health Canada Research Forum, Invasive Species Council of Manitoba, and Manitoba Association of Plant Biologists. In 2019 she was proudly the driving force behind the local club, Westman Naturalists Inc., spending the next 7 years helping to develop a robust organizational structure, and to plan winter talks and field trips through the year. She will be remembered most for generously sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for nature with innumerable field trip participants.
Despite activities and accomplishments that leave us in awe, Glennis was not super-human. She struggled from young to late adulthood with hard relationships within the family, flagging self esteem, perception of inadequacy, emotional consequences of a brief marriage, economic "progress" overcoming the natural environment, and depressing world events. But she fought these valiantly by empowering herself with education, aiming for prestigious work, taking plentiful leisure and adventure in nature, expressing her twisted and sometimes dark sense of humour, and cultivating genuine friendships everywhere she went.
She found success. We hope in her later days she knew and felt this success as much as we recognize it now.
A celebration of Glennis' life will occur in early June, 2026, in the Brandon area. If you are interested in attending or contributing, please complete this short form or email CelebrateGlennis@gmail.com.
For those wanting to make a donation in Glennis' memory, please choose an environmental, social or naturalist cause important to you. Glennis found value and meaning in all of these areas.
