100 years with the Québec Society for the Protection of Plants Les 100 ans de la Société de protection des plantes du Québec

During most of the hundred years since its foundation on June 24, 1908 at McGill University’s Macdonald College, the Québec Society for the Protection of Plants has been a leader in providing a bilingual (French and English) forum for commentaries and publications pertaining to the protection of plants and the history of many men and women who have contributed to that leadership. This incorporated society has had more than 60 different presidents, and it has held its annual meetings in various places throughout Quebec. It has an internationally recognized journal, Phytoprotection, that acceptsscientific articles in French and English from all over the world, and it has its own distinctive logo. These assets, along with an increasing number of active and well educated members, give it a solid foundation from which to launch its second century of advocating and supporting advances in all aspects of plant protection. June 24, 2008 marked the 100th anniversary of the Québec Society for the Protection of Plants (QSPP), a society that began in what was then the main lecture room of the biology building at McGill University’s Macdonald College. It has the distinction of being the oldest society in the Western Hemisphere that is devoted to the protection of plants and is still operating under its original name. Its nearest rival for that honour is the American Phytopathological Society (APS), which also began in 1908, but not until December of that year, nearly six months after the QSPP. It may be of interest to note that in the beginning the APS charged a membership fee of 50 cents per year, whereas one could become a member of the QSPP free of charge. Because there were no membership fees, the young Society had little need for a treasurer. The duties of the secretary, according to Article 21 of the original constitution, were “to have custody of the funds, the archives, and the documents of the Society.” To make these duties more obvious, the secretary’s title became that of secretary-treasurer. Because there were no membership fees, the secretary-treasurer had no way of knowing when a member lost interest or wished to resign unless one sent a note to inform the Society of his or her intention to resign. This unsatisfactory situation continued until the 60th annual business meeting, when a membership fee of $3.00 for regular members and $1.50 for students was authorized. In keeping with the rising costs of almost everything, the Society’s membership fees have had to be increased two or three times since then. The constitution, as revised at the general business meeting held on May 5, 1976, allowed the administration to elect a secretary, a treasurer and an assistant secretary instead of a secretary-treasurer. At that meeting, Roger Garneau handed in his resignation after 16 years as “temporary secretary.” Someone once said that studying history is very much like traveling through time. A history of the first 75 years of the QSPP has been published (Estey 1983), and one has to admit that many of the QSPP’s features during those first three-quarters of a century were of greater significance to agriculture, especially Quebec agriculture, than those of the past 25 years. Therefore, some of the highlights of its early history bear repeating. At the time when the QSPP started publishing its Annual Reports, which were in both English and French, there were very few organizations in Canada that published useful information in French pertaining to the care and management of crops. For several years the Annual Reports of the QSPP were used as textbooks in schools and colleges of agriculture because of …