Sylvia Edlund

Life

She was born in Pittsburgh, of Swedish heritage, and grew up there and in Ontario. Edlund earned a BSc from Case Western Reserve University and a PhD in botany from the University of Chicago. Before she began field work, Edlund was often ill and was frequently confined to bed as a child. She said that she took up botany because she thought that she "shouldn't study anything I'd have to chase". She began work with a United Nations team tasked with producing an inventory of plants and animals in the far north. She worked in the Canadian Arctic for the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) from 1974 to 1994, when she was forced to retire due to a problem with an inflamed appendix which was not diagnosed in time and wound up affecting her short term memory.

Edlund was an expert on plant distribution patterns in the Arctic. She also published a book on Common arctic wildflowers of the Northwest Territories which she illustrated with her own watercolours. At the end of her professional career, she managed the High Arctic Global Change Observatory for the GSC. After retiring, she became a volunteer working with people with disabilities in Ottawa and on Gabriola Island in British Columbia. She earned a Masters in Therapeutic Counselling from the Open International University for Complementary Medicines in 2003.

She died in Nanaimo from sepsis and kidney failure at the age of 69.

Festuca edlundiae, a high arctic grass, was named in her honour.