In last Friday's 20 Years Ago This Week, we met Fenwick's Alannah MacDonald, age 11 in 2005, proud recipient of a certificate acknowledging her contribution to the study of Monarch butterfly migration. Where, we wondered, was Alannah today, two decades later. Still bonkers over bugs? Off in a rain forest tracking an elusive arachnid? Or had she taken the MBA/CPA route, now happily crunching numbers for Enbridge or RBC.
This time the Google search gods were benevolently generous, and a couple of readers reached out as well, including a colleague of Alannah's parents. But it's her story to tell, so without further ado, here's Alannah's 20-year update:
When my mom sent “check messenger!” to our family WhatsApp chat, I definitely didn’t expect to click on the article that popped up— finding 11-year-old me staring back. My mom is always checking her emails, often to read and pass on health tips, so kudos to her for catching this article that I would have otherwise missed!
I quickly responded to her saying that I didn’t remember it being published 20 years ago, but then the memories started to slowly come back, of shy little me being so nervous about what questions the paper was going to ask me about my butterflies.
I sent the article to my partner, Abbas, who said “This is so cute!” and then laughed because the original picture looked like a mugshot, especially in black and white, and now I laugh every time I look at it. I promise you I was ecstatic holding that certificate, I’m just not very photogenic. (Updated mugshot above!)
My sister, Caitlin, and I spent so many of our summers running around our property in Fenwick looking for bugs, spending a large amount of that time searching the milkweed plants for monarch eggs and caterpillars, so that we could raise them and eventually tag and release the butterflies. To this day, if I see a patch of milkweed, I almost always flip a few leaves over checking for monarchs.
I still remember receiving the notice that one of my monarchs was found in Mexico, as it was a goal I was determined to fulfill, and when it happened, I was over the moon. That certificate is still framed, living somewhere in my parents’ house in Fonthill, so I’ll have to dig it out next time I visit.
Also, I’d argue that if I had to pick a favourite bug today, I’d likely still say the praying mantis, having so many fond memories searching for that elusive bug, getting over-the-top excited if I ever found one. I tell friends today that I didn’t watch whatever TV shows were popular in the early 2000s because I was busy running around looking for bugs (or tadpoles, or frogs, or toads). I’m not kidding!
Unfortunately, despite my love of insects, I didn’t follow my planned path to become an entomologist. However, Caitlin did!
I always joke that it was my influence that led her down that path, as there’s a home video of her as a baby, and me (about two-and-a-half years older) showing her an insect field guide book excitedly saying “Look! Insects, Caitlin, insects!” She went to the University Guelph for undergrad as well as her Master’s in Biodiversity and Environmental Science. There, and also when she worked at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, she completed projects in insect biological control, which in very simple terms is using “good” bugs to control “bad” bugs for crop protection. She’s now continuing her education, in the process of completing her Graduate Certificate in Ecosystem Restoration at Niagara College, where both of our parents teach and my mom is also a Lab Technologist.
I always had an interest in science, math and research, flipping between wanting to become a vet, entomologist or maybe kinesiologist. In high school, once we started learning about biochemistry and genetics in biology class, I quickly knew that was what I wanted to pursue. Like Caitlin (and both our parents), I went to the University of Guelph and completed my undergrad in Biochemistry, after which I moved to Toronto to do my PhD at the University of Toronto and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Medical Biophysics (read: cancer research).
In my bug-catching days in rural Fenwick, never in a million years did I see myself moving to the big city, but here I am, and I love it! I just completed my PhD at the end of December, after seven years, during which I studied a gene highly involved in cancer, which currently has no drugs targeting it. My lab (and many labs around the world) are exploring ways to target this “difficult” gene to hopefully develop a cancer therapeutic in the near future. I’m currently still in the lab finishing up some of these projects, with the hopes of moving onto a career in medical affairs, which is a department within a pharmaceutical or life sciences company that communicates scientific and clinical data to the medical community.
I was recently back home over the holidays, after I defended my PhD, and found my Grade 12 Crossley yearbook. I opened it to the graduates page to double check that I had remembered my “ten year plan” correctly. It said, “Finding the cure to cancer, still running”. I am happy that (12 years later) I have at least done my small part to further cancer research, with the running part technically still true, but a bit more loosely.
I ran track and field and cross country competitively throughout elementary school, high school and undergrad, and now just run when I find the time or need some stress relief. My goal this year is to get back into it a bit more, having just convinced my dad to run with me in the 8k Spring Run-Off in High Park in April (well, it didn’t take that much convincing, considering he signed up the instant I mentioned it, before I had even registered myself).
My dad, who coaches at the Niagara Olympic Club, where I trained in high school (and who was my coach for a while) told me I better start training so I “don’t get beat by a senior citizen!” as he turned 65 just last week. He has been running much more consistently than me, and so now this is a real fear of mine— I am more than likely to get beaten by a Boomer.
The other thing that has stayed consistent throughout my life is my love of animals. Ours was always known as the family with all the pets—we had multiple cats (up to five at once, or more when a stray cat we took in had kittens, plus our greenhouse cats), hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, fish, a gecko, and on occasion guinea pigs when we babysat the classroom pets for the summer. We even had a red squirrel for eight months when a family friend dropped off an orphan at our house, assuming we’d know what to do with a baby squirrel that didn’t even have its eyes open yet. It worked out—Cheeko survived and was one of the best pets we had, who we eventually released once spring came. I always wanted a dog and begged my parents for one, but looking back I definitely can’t blame them for saying no.
Although I still don’t own a dog, I do spend a lot of my free time volunteering for a local foster-based dog and cat rescue, New Collar Collective, as a member of the management team, and have fostered many dogs over the past three years. It has been a very rewarding experience, although also very heartbreaking at times. If anyone reading this has thought about fostering a dog or cat, I highly recommend it; rescues are desperate for fosters right now!
And with that I think I’ve given a thorough enough 20-year update. I told myself when I sat down to write this that it would likely be fairly short, as I don’t have that much to say. But then again, I did just hand in my 164-page thesis and don’t have a tendency to keep things short, so here you go!