by Marty Brown
Northern News Services

NNSL (Feb 19/97) - William McDonald has a school, a lake and a 300- metre deep fault on the east arm of Great Slave Lake named after him.

And after 40 years of documenting treasures, from birds eggs to Western Arctic geographical landmarks, that's not too bad.

Naturalist Jamie Bastedo portrayed McDonald -- who lived in the North from 1920 until his death in 1971 -- in a one man show at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre, Sunday.

Bastedo first became interested in the prospector-turned-naturalist because of McDonald's extensive egg collection.

There are 513 of them at the centre alone, 1,500 more in other collections around North America.

And then there's his precise field books.

"The writing is clear, the drawings neat," said Bastedo. "He didn't just look at rocks."

McDonald collected 2,000 egg samples in 50 years. Those were the days before pesticides, when egg shells were thicker than they are now. His collection is still invaluable to scientists who use it for baseline data, said Bastedo.

McDonald's Northern collection of robin, loon, gull and tern eggs is still stored in goose down-lined cigar boxes, which were saved by McDonald himself when his Joliffe Island house caught on fire in 1953.

After obtaining degrees in mine engineering and geology, McDonald came North to Norman Wells in 1920 as a field assistant.

Two years later he went to the East Arm with the Geological Survey of Canada, where he worked at mapping the region.

While mapping, McDonald was asked to collect everything from plants to lichen and rocks to eggs for the University of Alberta and the Museum of Ottawa.

That was easy for McDonald, who grew up in rural Manitoba where the love outdoors was just as much a part of life as it is in the North.

There wasn't much known about migratory birds then. When the Audubon Society and United States Wildlife Society heard about the species that were in the area, they came up to see for themselves.

Bald eagles were big on their list of birds to study. Although the populations were declining in the States, there was an abundance of bald eagles here.

Fifty people attended Bastedo's performance, Sunday afternoon, which was part of the centre's popular Amazing Sunday program.