The former dean of the University of Alberta’s agriculture program died in a horse riding accident Jan. 8. He was 58.
Ian Morrison served as dean of the faculty of agriculture, forestry and home economics at the University of Alberta from 1996 until 2004. Before that he was head of the department of plant science at the University of Manitoba, where he specialized in weed control of field and forage crops.
He recently returned from a sabbatical in Australia where he worked with the Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit in Toowoomba, Queensland.
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Morrison was born Nov. 30, 1947, in Lacombe, Alta. He completed his bachelors and masters degrees in agriculture at the U of A where he met his wife Joanne in 1972. They travelled to Australia where he completed his PhD.
They returned to Canada where he spent 20 years at the U of M.
In the 1980s he moved to Pakistan where he worked as an oilseed agronomist on a Canadian International Development Agency project.
Noel McNaughton, a university classmate, said Morrison was a good guy who was popular with his students at university.
McNaughton also remembers the time the pair were spraying a potato plot just outside Edmonton in 1967 and McNaughton ran over Morrison with the sprayer. Morrison was in a body cast for a year. Years later, Morrison told a worried McNaughton the only thing the accident prevented him from doing was vacuuming.
Morrison was a member of the Alberta Trail Riders Association, the Alberta Carriage Driving Association and the Alberta Equestrian Federation.
A memorial service was held Jan. 13 in Sherwood Park, Alta. Interment will take place later at Lacombe. He is survived by his wife and three children.
