R. D. Lawrence
Canadian wildlife naturalist and author (1921-2003)
Ronald Douglas Lawrence (September 12, 1921 – November 27, 2003) was a Canadian naturalist and wildlife author. He was an expert on the wildlife of Canada, on which he wrote more than thirty books, which have been published in 14 languages.
Biography
Early life: Spain, Britain, and war
Lawrence, one of five children, was born in 1921 on a British passenger ship in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Spain. His mother was Spanish and his father, a journalist, was British. As a child in northern Spain, Lawrence became interested in nature. In his autobiography, he described his young self as a "happy loner engrossed in the natural world ... I cannot recall a single day when I was bored".
At 14, Lawrence lied about his age so that he could join the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and killed a man on his first night to save himself. He served for two years, until in 1938 he found himself outnumbered in the Pyrenees and fled to France. He soon traveled to Britain to rejoin his family, and during the summer of 1939 he worked on the Queen Mary.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “R. D. Lawrence” as canadian wildlife naturalist and author (1921-2003). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian wildlife naturalist and author (1921-2003). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7276261. VIAF identifies the subject as 85742183. The Library of Congress control number is n79116436. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2003, 1938 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “R. D. Lawrence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.