Jack Miner - Legacy

Legacy

The Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary was one of the first of its kind in North America, and remains in existence today. It is located near Kingsville in Essex County, Ontario, resting on a peninsula between Lake Erie to the south and Lake Saint Clair to the north. It is ten miles away from the well-known birding destination Point Pelee National Park, which Miner helped to designate as a national park in 1918. (The "Atlantic" and "Mississippi" migratory flyways converge in this area.)

Jack Miner died in 1944. He had been presented with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by King George VI in 1943 "for the greatest achievement in conservation in the British Empire." In his lifetime, he had banded over 50,000 wild ducks and 40,000 Canada geese. Several U.S. newspapers rated him among the best-known men on the continent, among Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker. In 1947, Canada's National Wildlife Week Act passed unanimously to be observed the week of Jack Miner's birth, April 10 each year.

The first school to be named after the legendary conservationist was built in 1956 and renamed Jack Miner Public School in 1968. It remains to this day, just a few miles from Miner's sanctuary in what was Gosfield South Township. Each year the graduating students participate in the yearly banding activities at the sanctuary. A school in the name of Jack Miner was created in 2001 in Whitby, Ontario, administered by the Durham District School Board. There is also a Jack Miner Senior Public School in Guildwood in city of Scarborough,ON.

The Town of Kingsville Ontario celebrates the life and legacy of Jack Miner in an Annual Fall Migration Festival.