Remembering Judith…
- susan5383
- Oct 8
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 9
By Patsy Cotterill
Judith Golub (June 14, 1949–October 28, 2022), a life-long Edmontonian, was an active and deeply committed member of and volunteer in the Edmonton Native Plant Society. However, the scope of her interests and activities in nature and conservation went much farther than that.
Most of the text that follows accompanied a presentation made in tribute to Judith on February 4, 2023, just three months after she died following a brave, five-year long battle with metastatic cancer.
Judith as a Communicator of Nature
Judith had two overriding interests and passions. One was plants. The other was sharing her interest in plants. She did this using her graphic and computer skills to design and format all sorts of communications on various environmental and ecological topics. Following a study of botany and ecology at university, she combined these two interests in her communications work with the Canadian Wildlife Service, Alberta Parks and, as it was then called, the Provincial Museum and Archives of Alberta (now the Provincial Museum of Alberta), in the case of the PMAA working with the late curator of the Botany Programme, Julie Hrapko. These interests of course made her a perfect fit for the Edmonton Naturalization Group when it organized around 2000, later becoming formalized as the Edmonton Native Plant Society.
After ENPS was formed in August 2017, Judith became its second president, from 2018 until mid 2020. She was involved with our group of native-plant promoters for over a dozen years and had her fingers in a lot of pies, making numerous contributions over that time. Her passion and competence allowed her to get things done expeditiously, an ability from which the Society greatly benefitted.
Examples of her design work for ENPS include formatting and publishing the Wildflower News as its editor, laying out brochures, and getting our first order of blue volunteer T-shirts (with the ENPS logo) made and distributed. Judith was responsible for creating the wildflower greeting cards that we sell, and fabricating countless notices, invitations and cards for special events and distributing them extensively by means of her mailing lists.
And she used her design skills and knowledge of nature to help others as well. When she heard that the Friends of Hodgson Wetland stewards group in Edmonton was dithering about developing some interpretive signage for the natural pond, she jumped right in and produced four posters that were made into signs. Judith also developed and presented numerous Powerpoint slide-shows at various community functions and at meetings of the Edmonton Nature Club’s sub-group, the Edmonton Plant Study Group. She was the webmaster of the ENPS website from its beginnings until her death.
When the Stewards of Alberta’s Protected Areas Association was revitalized around 2020 Judith eagerly jumped in as a member of the newsletter production team.
Judith as Native Plant Advocate
As for the plants, horticultural and wild, she was fascinated by them all. She couldn’t resist buying plants and had lots of specimen plants in her big garden. Later on, though, she became much more interested in natives, and one of her early endeavours, when she was working as Perennials Manager for Arch Greenhouses, was to persuade the owner to sell native plants. Later on, she developed a close relationship with Val, greenhouse manager at the Royal Mayfair Golf Club, and there she used their facilities to grow native plants for the golf course beds as well as for ENPS. Val was eager that the golfers should be exposed to native plants, and was happy to have ENPS benefit from the surplus seedlings.
Judith’s Favourite Plant Places
Besides having a great relationship with plants as individuals, Judith also had a huge interest in where they lived, i.e., plant communities. For her, these natural ecosystems were located in Edmonton, elsewhere in Alberta and Canada, and even in Europe, as she had an old school friend she visited in Holland and France.
Needless to say, she loved the river valley and was familiar with her local Mill Creek Ravine from a very early age. Judith was part of the group, including NDP Environment Critic Marlin Schmidt, checking out Big Island in southwest Edmonton in 2019 when the UCP was floating its intention of making it into a provincial park.
Among her favourite types of wild areas were badlands, such as Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park in the Red Deer River valley. Even when she wasn’t well enough to wander up and down its difficult terrain as a field trip member, she drove with her husband Dennis to the rim of the park so she could feast on the landscape and its wildflowers. Paint Earth Coulee, a tributary of the Battle River, was another favourite spot that she used to call in on her way down south. Big Knife Provincial Park was another badland/prairie landscape she knew and visited.
Closer to home she loved the provincial sandy Natural Areas north of Edmonton, such as Northwest of Bruderheim, Redwater and Opal, all jack pine forests on dunes with high wild flower diversity. I remember how horrified she was when we visited North Bruderheim Natural Area after it had been turned into a Provincial Recreation Area and saw the utter devastation done to it by the ATVs.
Judith the Conservationist
When you are a naturalist and love natural places, in this day and age you automatically become a conservationist.
Her favourite local badlands were what we call the Gibbons Badlands Prairie, where the Sturgeon River has cut down deep through layers of sediment opposite the town of Gibbons. And this is probably where she had one of her biggest conservation achievements. We were introduced to these slopes by a member of the Cactus Club of Edmonton, who informed us that native fragile prickly pear cactus grew there. The following winter we became aware that snowmobiles were making deep tracks on those slopes, and the area was also threatened by quad and bike use in the summer. We complained to the town council who said their hands were tied regarding enforcement and, anyway, they weren’t sure the Sturgeon slopes were their property. Judith was having no such excuses; she went to the Land Titles Office in Edmonton and got the title document to show that they did indeed own them and should take responsibility. The upshot, although it took them a couple of years to get round to it, was that the Town put up a fence and some signage declaring the area off-limits to ATVs. Judith had been a prime mover in making presentations at town council meetings, preparing brochures, presenting at community events and organizing field trips to get the locals engaged. Gibbons Badland Prairie is still a thorn in the side of ENPS; Judith’s efforts, however, motivate us to carry on working for better protection for the area.
ENPS was alerted, around 2015, to the fact that some sandy prairie was going to be destroyed as part of a widening of Highway 28, just north of Gibbons at McLeod Creek Farm. Judith was a keen participant in the volunteer salvage crews that were allowed to remove plants from the targeted area. On the other hand, she was strict about us removing any plants that were likely to survive the destruction – she was very, very conservative when it came to harvesting. She loved that McLeod Creek Farm area with its sandy soils and prairie species and liked nothing better than to patrol it for the status of prairie crocus blooms in the spring.
Judith also frequented Bunchberry Meadows, an NCC/EALT conservation area located on the Devon sand dune, and here she and Dennis discovered a rare plant, a single specimen of northern hound’s-tongue, Andersonglossum boreale. It was later cordoned off by EALT staff with a notice as to its significance. Judith had her own restoration plot near the parking area at Bunchberry as part of ENPS’ larger project, but reluctantly had to give it up in the summer of 2022. Local resident and volunteer Sue Panteluk kindly took it over.
Judith’s Legacy
Judith gave up her passions with great reluctance – she was working on the October 2022 issue of Wildflower News at the time of her death. As people with similar interests and passions to Judith, we can carry on her legacy, be inspired by what she was inspired by, and vow as volunteers to carry on doing the kinds of things she was doing, motivated to emulate what Judith practiced: in her own words, an ethic of care and responsibility for the natural world.
Judith’s remains lie in a pleasant green cemetery in Sherwood Park, lovingly attended by family and friends.
