Reginald Ernest Balch was born in Sevenoaks, England, in 1894, the son of Sarah Hawkes and Rev. Alfred Ernest Balch. He emigrated to Canada in 1913 and following service as a lieutenant in the Canadian Field Artillery, attended the Ontario Agricultural College (BSA, 1923) and Syracuse University (MSc and PhD).

In 1930 Balch was appointed officer in charge of the Dominion Entomological Laboratory, a federal government facility, located on the UNB campus in Fredericton. In the years that followed, he received world recognition for his work as a forester, entomologist, ecologist, and conservationist. He discovered and promoted the method of biological control that eliminated the threat of the European spruce sawfly which had been destroying forests in Eastern Canada, directed the first budworm spray program in NB in the 1950s and was instrumental in persuading the City of Fredericton to take action against the Dutch Elm beetle. His five half-hour radio lectures for the CBC's long-running adult-education programme, "University of the Air," during the spring of 1965, were essential to the introduction of the word "ecology" to the public. The texts of these lectures were later published in The Ecological Viewpoint (Toronto: CBC, 1965).

Following his retirement from the Fredericton laboratory in 1960, he began to take his life-long hobby of photography more seriously, eventually publishing two books of photographs, A Mind's Eye in 1985 and Celebrations of Nature in 1991. Balch's photographs were also used to illustrate Alden Nowlan's Early poems, published in 1983. His photos have also appeared in Camera Canada and the International Photography Year Book.

Throughout his life, Balch was the recipient of many awards and honours: an honorary Doctor of Science degree from UNB (1963); the first Canadian and, at the time, only the second non-US resident to receive the Society of American Foresters Award of Achievement in Biological Research; honorary member of the Canadian and American societies of Entomology; honorary president of the Conservation Council of NB; recipient of the Silver Medal from the Royal Society of Arts; and recipient of the Distinguished Citizen's Award of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce (1985).

Reg Balch died, aged 99, on 14 April 1994 in Fredericton, NB.

Source: UA Case 73m - UNB Honorary Degree Recipients, Biographies