Malacologist & entomologist Wayne Grimm died of complications of
diabetes, unexpectedly but peacefully, in his home in Kemptville,
Ontario, on the evening of Wednesday 8 June 2005.

Wayne was born in 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in
Baltimore, Maryland. His mother was Eugenia Stanley Grimm of West
Virginia. His father was Frank Gustav Grimm of Baltimore, commercial
artist, and director at Maryland Historical Society. Wayne was mentored
in malacology by Leslie Hubricht, and as a high school graduate recieved
the Westinghouse Scholarship for Science at University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. He was one of a chosen group of science students to go to
Princeton to meet with Albert Einstein: Wayne was "overwhelmed with the
intelligence of his love".

Between 1959 and 1976 he published approximately 25 zoological papers,
mostly on molluscs, in The Canadian Field-Naturalist, The Nautilus,
Bulletin of American Malacological Union, and several other journals.
Wayne immigrated to Canada in the early 1970's, donating his mollusc
collection to the National Museum in Ottawa (now the Canadian Museum of
Nature http://www.nature.ca/museum/org/orgchart_e.cfm#invertebrates . He
worked in the museum's department of Design and Display, and became a
Canadian citizen in 1976.

In the early to mid 1970's, while surveying populations of molluscs in
fragile ecosystems rich in endemics, he became increasingly aware that
the integrity of the entire biosphere was being threatened by human
activity, and relinquished work in zoology for an unconventional path
that included studies in biophysics, spectroscopy, quantum physics,
electromagnetic theory, geophysics, biochemistry, ecology, and aspects
of certain social sciences.

Returning to malacology around 1990, he concentrated on the snails and
insects of limestone alvars, especially the Burnt Lands alvar near
Clayton, Ontario.  He surveyed alvars in the Great Lakes Basin for the
Nature Conservancy, and published "Terrestrial Molluscs of the Mixed
Wood Ecozone" http://www.naturewatch.ca/Mixedwood/landsnai/intro.htm .
He was Invertebrate Curator at the Eastern Ontario Biodiversity Museum
from 1999 until his death. A book about introduced terrestrial
Gastropods of northeastern North America was in manuscript at the time
of his death, and we hope to be able to complete and publish it.

He is survived by his first wife Glenda Morris and daughter Tamar, his
second wife Phylis Mobley and their son Josh, his third wife Meredith
Marshall and their son and daughter Sylvan and Melissa, his fourth wife
Karen Osterreich, his cousin Vivianne Griffin and many dear friends.
Visitation will be held at Grant Brown Funeral Home Rolston Chapel,
Kemptville, on Tuesday, 21 June, from 13h00-15h00. A celebration of
Wayne's life will follow, with a receptuiion at Amanda's Slip
restaurant, Clothier Street, Kemptville. According to his wishes and
those of his family, Wayne's remains will be cremated.

Wayne's love of nature was infectious, and his stories of natural
phenomena never failed to delight aquaintances new and old. In a
biographical sketch he wrote: "Since early childhood I have been
committed to understanding the relationships between organisms." He
leaves a major gap in our understanding of Canadian malacology, where
his field experience was continental, his knowledge was encyclopaedic
(if slightly mystical), and his assessments of species identity were
consistantly maintained (even if not always fully visible to other
investigators).

I'm assembling his bibliography and collecting testimonials & anecdotes
of Wayne's history & character. We're holding his collections here at
the Bishops Mills Natural History Centre, and we'll put up a website of
his many unpublished mss and other works, as time allows. If he's left
any outstanding loans, let me know and I'll look out for them in the
masses of material we've brought from his offices.

Frederick W. Schueler
Research Curator
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           Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad, Jennifer Helene Schueler
      RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
     (613)258-3107 <[log in to unmask]> http://pinicola.ca
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